Why BofA Is Betting on Branches
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Why does Bank of America believe physical branches still matter?
What if the biggest myth in banking is that customers don't need branches anymore? Because every time Bank of America opens a new financial center, digital sales in that market jump 50%. Physical presence isn't competing with digital at Bank of America. It's actually accelerating it. Now, Bank of America is putting $750 million behind a bet that the rest of the industry walked away from maybe too soon, opening 150 financial centers across 60 markets by 2027 at more than $5 million per location. Bold? Yes. Contradictory? Maybe. But the timing suggests something deeper. After shrinking from 6,000 branches to about 3,700, they now believe the future isn't fewer branches, it's actually smarter ones. These next generation financial centers aren't transaction factories.
They're advisory hubs staffed by 12,000 relationship bankers designed to anchor communities and handle the conversations digital can't, or at least not yet. My guest today is Will Smeida, who's leading this transformation. He'll explain why Bank of America is expanding while others retreat. and what these new financial centers reveal about how clients actually want to bank. So here's the question we all need to wrestle with. Is this the future of the branch? Or is it the most expensive contradiction in banking? So Will, before we dive in, can you give our audience a sense of your role and what you oversee day to day as well as where you came from within the Bank of America organization?
Yeah, and and Jim, I I'd like to have you on our payroll to lay out our strategy for the Financial Center channel. I appreciate the setup. Um I'm responsible for our 3,650 financial centers across the United States and the 25,000 or so folks that operate inside of them. It's a wonderful role interacting with our 70 million clients all the time and our 25,000 employees all the time. I've been with Bank of America for 25 years. I started my career at Merrill Lynch in New York and New Jersey grew up working with individuals, helping folks plan for the future, helping folks start up businesses and then prepare for um their eventual passing it down. So wealth management for a long, long time. And as you know, during the financial crisis, uh Bank of America acquired Merrill Lynch.
And we had this model uh at Merrill Lynch that we uh um brought into our consumer financial centers where we could give financial advice to our consumer and specifically our preferred customers who have uh have these long-term planning, long-term savings and wealth management needs. So it's been a wonderful um bringing together of two massive businesses. And now they come to life every day in our financial centers.
So it's interesting. I reference the fact that you've cut your branch branch background. You know, it hasn't been too long ago that you had 6,000 branches, you're now down to 3,700 or so, but now you're investing heavily to add 150 more by 2027. What's changed? What justifies the spending of that five million dollars per location when conventional wisdom, or at least the wisdom that some of the the executives of the financial services industry have, say branchers are dying, and what signal in the data convince you that the timing was right to expand?
Yeah, um thanks for the question. Um I I think you start with client behavior. Ma maybe that's obvious, but in the In the time period leading up to COVID, our customers, because our digital bank had come on so strong, and adoption was really, really positive. Um, 80% plus of our customers are actively digital with us. So, what happened in that time period was a massive shift of everyday banking transactions, moving money, making deposits. Um, a lot of that service or where cash activity drastically shifted from in the branches. I mean, you've been in financial centers like me where there used to be 15 tellers on a window, because that's how many customers we would see on the regular. All much of that shifted digital.
Members all too well.
Yep.
So Right. So so bringing the financial centers down um from six thousand to thirty seven hundred made sense.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why does Bank of America believe physical branches still matter?
0:06–8:39
2
What is Will Smayda’s role and how does he oversee the financial‑center network?
8:39–17:18
3
Why is BofA investing $750 million to open 150 new centers after cutting branches?
17:18–31:26
4
How does opening a new financial center boost digital sales by 50 %?
31:26–44:12