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JPMorgan Chase has already received permission from state regulators to open six retail branches in the Greater Boston area, in Boston, Brookline, Dedham, Watertown and Newton. But a whole lot more are coming.
The banking giant announced Monday at the Forbes 30 Under 30 event in Boston that it plans to open 60 retail branches and 130 ATMs in New England. Fifty of those branches will be in the Greater Boston area, the Boston Business Journal reported.
The initiative is part of a broader plan JPMorgan announced earlier this year to expand into 15 to 20 new markets and open 400 new branches and employ 3,000 people. The new branches in New England are expected to bring more than 350 jobs to the region.
“For our community its a place where they can open up their account; they can get advice; they can have experiences,” Chase’s Consumer Banking CEO Thasunda Duckett told CBS Boston in an interview at the Forbes event. “It’s about making sure we are their wing man in building their financial health journey.”
Of the new branches, 10 to 20 percent will be opened in moderate- to low-income communities, according to Duckett.
With 50 branches in Massachusetts, JPMorgan would fall into a select group.
Only six other institutions – Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Santander Bank, TD Bank, Eastern Bank and Rockland Trust – have more than 50 branches in the Boston metropolitan area, according to the FDIC.
JPMorgan’s decision to open up hundreds of retail branches across the country bucks conventional wisdom, as most banks have been cutting down their physical presence to focus on seemingly more popular digital banking solutions.
With its play into retail, JPMorgan is likely focused on stealing market share from larger institutions because the bank needs a massive deposit base to fund its commercial operations, according to previous analysis from Bob Meara, a senior analyst in the banking group at the Boston-based firm Celent.
“If you are going to compete for that [older] demographic and roughly half of the U.S. banking market, it won’t just be with mobile app; you are going to need retail branch footprint,” he said.
