Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citizens and Chase among US banks that filed to shut 18 branches in just one week – is YOURS affected?

Wells Fargo filed to close eight branches in a single week this month, joining another eight banks in closing a total of 18.

Meanwhile, Chase continued to defy the industry-wide trend by announcing it would instead open eight.

Those were in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Utah. 

Only one other bank said it would open a branch, Wintrust Bank in Chicago. That brought the total openings to nine – half the number of scheduled closures.

Banks are therefore continuing to close branches much faster than they’re opening them, with a focus on shutting rural locations and consolidating around cities.

Wells Fargo in October announced its first branch expansion strategy, focusing on opening new locations in the Chicago metro area

Chase has been an outlier among the major banks because it has been steadily increasing its branch count

Wells Fargo’s closures between March 10 and 16, reported to its regulator the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), were spread between Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas.

Overall, Wells Fargo has been a front-runner when it comes to bank branch closures.

Last year it notified the regulator it would close 312 branches, more than any other bank in the country. It opened only 22 across the entire year.

It is joined by US Bank, which this year has already said it would shut a total of more than 50.

In the first two months of the year, a DailyMail.com analysis showed that banks had filed to close 222 branches.

The average freestanding bank branch costs around $2.6 million a year, so being able to shut them and encourage customers to bank online can lead to big savings.

The last time the number of commercial bank branches in the US increased was in 2011 when there were more than 85,000, according to FDIC data.

Since then the number of physical branches has dropped fairly steadily to about 70,000.

This year, Chase said it would open 500 locations across the US in the next three years, and last year it was the only major bank to open more branches than it closed.

Chase opened 195 branches between January 1 and December 22 – almost six times more than Bank of America, which came in second by filing to open 32.