More than 6,000 commercial banking locations across the United States closed in the past five years, the Wall Street Journal reported in January. But banks such as JPMorgan Chase are bucking the trend.

In February, the lender announced it would be opening more than 160 branches in 30 states this year alone. That includes multiple locations in the Wilmington area.

Peter Gwaltney, president and CEO of the N.C. Bankers Association, sees Chase as part of a new trend.

“We’re going through something of a branching renaissance in North Carolina,” Gwaltney said. “I attribute that to the strength and health of our economy. We have so many metropolitan and suburban and even rural areas that are doing extremely well.”

As the Business Journal recently reported, Chase has submitted plans for banking locations in Wilmington at Hanover Center off Oleander Drive and in the Landfall Shopping Center off Eastwood Road near Wrightsville Beach. Those sites are in addition to a branch that was, as of press time, under construction at U.S. 17 and Ravenswood Drive in Hampstead.

A Chase spokesperson has said more locations are being planned for the market, and that the bank considered customer demand, along with business and population growth, when deciding to expand in the Wilmington area.

Gwaltney said other banks, such as Fifth Third Bank and Huntington Bank, are joining in.

“I’m going to a ribbon cutting or a groundbreaking almost weekly right now,” he said.

Still, lenders such as U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo have been culling their brick-and-mortar locations, having shuttered more than 90 each in the past half-decade, according to FDIC tracking. An AARP article about the trend attributed banking deserts to “millennials, mergers and technology.”

But Gwaltney said that, aside from generational preferences and digital advances, what’s emerging appears to be a new business model. Call them “financial centers,” “offices” or even “stores,” depending on the financial institution, but they are still branches, and they are flourishing, he said.

“Banks have rethought what the branch can be used for,” Gwaltney said. “It can be a community center. It can be where subject matter experts are located to help people with more complex problems than just posting checks and making loan payments, which are now done online in large part. And it can serve as a base of operations for small business and commercial lenders to go out into the community and have a place to meet.”

The revised branch layout is no longer driven by the teller line, he said. Former tellers “are doing other jobs, and they’re multifunctional people. We call them universal bankers.”

He added that customers of all generations eventually realize they can benefit from meeting in person with a real-life, knowledgeable expert when it comes to large transactions that give most people pause, such as financing a car or a home.

Gwaltney couldn’t comment on the Chase expansion strategy, but he noted that banks often take the same approach when entering into or expanding within a market.

“Rather than build a branch and then post the jobs that need to be filled, they’ll find a banker in that community who has a track record – roots, relationships – who can be their person to build out the team, so they can hit the ground running,” he said.

Chase said in its February announcement that it’s targeting “fast-growing regions” of the U.S. with the goal of giving customers locations within relatively close distances. The company is “aiming for 75% of Americans to be within a reasonable drive of a branch and over 50% within each state,” the press release stated.

The language appears to signal that the company sees those so-called “banking deserts” – a lack of branch options within a 2-mile radius of a city population center, a 5-mile radius of a suburban population center or a 10-mile radius of a rural population center – as a strong business opportunity.

So is it boom or doom for bank branches? While some watchers predict a continued decline, if the national trendline continues, others report reasons for optimism. PricewaterhouseCoopers and Five9 show in their respective research that customer experience drives purchasing, and that customers prefer a human, personalized experience over an entirely self-service option.

In both cases, about three-fourths of people preferred the human touch, which works in the branches’ favor, according to CUInsight, a website that reports credit union and financial services industry news.

Gwaltney, who attended Chase’s 1,000th branch opening last year in Charlotte, which had been planned since 2018, said he certainly doesn’t see branches going away anytime soon. He believes banks want the visibility of car and foot traffic. Physical presence helps keep them top of mind, whereas an online-only presence may dilute their brands.

“They do so,” he said, “because they want to be your one stop, your first phone call.”