Chase plans a big expansion in Mass.
Banking giant to grow branch network over next few years
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is doubling down on its aggressive branch expansion in Massachusetts, unveiling plans Tuesday to grow to 90 branches here by the end of 2025 from 36 today.
Most banks enter new markets by gobbling up smaller banks. But Chase, as the New York-based financial services giant’s retail banking operation is known, is up against a federal limit that prevents megabanks from buying their way to gain market share.
Chase has taken a different tact to fulfill chief executive Jamie Dimon’s vision of becoming a truly nationwide bank, with branches in all 48 states in the contiguous United States: It is opening branches one by one. This approach also allows Chase to pick the best locations, rather than work with the branch networks it inherits through acquisitions.
About four years ago, as part of a broader expansion to open 400 new locations through the end of 2022, Chase decided to enter three important metro areas where it did not previously have a retail presence: Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. At the time, Chase was in only about half of the states. By mid-2021, Chase was able to announce it became the first national bank to have a retail presence in every state except Alaska and Hawaii. (Chase had been in Connecticut for decades, but entered Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine as part of this recent push.)
Even as it has grown its geographic footprint, Chase has closed branches in some markets as well: At the end of 2021, it reported 4,790 branches in the United States, compared with just over 4,900 a year earlier.
In Massachusetts, Chase started with a branch in Dedham in late 2018,
and then one in Downtown Crossing in early 2019, and it has been steadily building its presence in Boston and the suburbs ever since.
Now, Chase is looking to reach other parts of the state: Its first branch in Worcester opens next month, with at least four more in Central Massachusetts on the way. Its first branch in Springfield will open next year, with three more locations planned in that part of the state over the next few years. And Chase expects to open three locations on Cape Cod by 2025. Meanwhile, it is filling out its network in Greater Boston, with branch openings planned soon in Needham and Boston’s Financial District.
Dimon said the brick-and-mortar presence remains important, even as digital banking is on the rise.
“We always had business here,” Dimon said of Greater Boston. “But once you start building those branches and have a retail presence, it enhances all your small-business efforts, your [midsized business] efforts, your private banking efforts, your corporate banking efforts, all your philanthropy-related efforts.”
Dimon was in Boston on Tuesday in part to meet with regional executives at the bank’s Rowes Wharf office.
He said it was clear, during that conversation, the Greater Boston branch network has been helpful to them. The modern bank branch, at least under the Chase umbrella, looks quite different than it did decades ago; Dimon said most of the eight to 10 employees at a typical branch today are advisers, not tellers.
Dimon added: “You would be shocked how many people need branches.”