JPMorgan Chase is taking a bit-by-bit approach with its branch expansion plans in certain regions of the country, as it continues its quest of capturing 15% of U.S. consumer deposits. Being too aggressive with any strategy carries inherent risk, said Billy Botsakos, JPMorgan Chase’s consumer banking lead for the Southeast. “When we look at stuff, let’s make sure that we’re biting it off in small bites,” he said. With branch openings, that means the biggest U.S. bank won’t open 50 locations in a state all at once, but rather two or three at a time, to ensure it’s keeping customers top of mind and making tweaks if needed, he said. The bank has about 5,000 branches spread across the lower 48 states, it said, adding that nearly 1 million clients a day visit the bank’s branches. The bank is spending billions of dollars to open about 500 branches – around Boston, Charlotte, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and the Washington, D.C., area – and hire 3,500 employees by early 2027.
The lender is intent on shortening drive times to branches and being easily accessible to clients, chasing a goal of being within an hour’s drive of 75% of its U.S. customers, Botsakos said. Today, that figure is 68%. To execute its strategy around that drive time goal and increase convenience for clients, “we have to go in places that we’re currently not,” Botsakos said. That includes the bank setting up shop in communities and locations “that our clients are asking us for, that our research is telling us that we need to be in, that our own employees are telling us that customers are asking for,” he said. Ongoing expansion efforts there are “representative of where we are in the rest of the country,” he said. Those include the west side of Charlotte, where the bank has no presence. Elsewhere in North Carolina, Chase has opened branches in Winston-Salem and has plans for more there, as well as in nearby Greensboro. Chase also seeks to add more in Raleigh and its suburbs, as well as in the Wilmington area on the state’s coast. In South Carolina, Botsakos flagged the outskirts of Myrtle Beach, where the bank has a presence already, and in Hilton Head and its surrounding area, where it doesn’t yet. The lender is gunning to both keep existing customers after they’ve moved and acquire new customers in those fresh locations, he said. In Charlotte, for example, it’s become apparent many customers have come from regions with existing Chase locations, so the brand “doesn’t necessarily need a whole lot of explanation,” he noted. “In many cases, we’re not necessarily new to that client, we’re just new to the area,” he said. The Southeast has been an area of particular focus for top-20 bank expansion, as population and business growth in the region soars.