Bank of America has closed more branches in the first nine months of 2024 than any other major bank.
The banking giant closed 132 branches between January and September, according to an analysis of official closure data from DailyMail.com.
This significantly outpaced its peers, with US Bank closing the second most branches with 101 during the same period.
A Bank of America spokesperson told DailyMail.com that many closures involved merging two nearby branches into one.
But closing branches forces locals who rely on personal services to travel further to reach the nearest branch.
Bank of America closed the most branches of any U.S. bank in the first nine months of the year
Banks must report all planned closings and openings to the Office of the Comptroller of the Coin (OCC), a federal banking regulator.
She publishes a summary of this every week.
DailyMail.com has analyzed these to compile the details of the total closures so far this year.
In total, more than 700 branches were closed, forcing thousands to travel further to access essential services.
If this number of closures continues for the rest of this year, just over 1,000 branches will be closed across the country by the new year.
Meanwhile, separate research recently found that the last physical bank branch in the US could close by 2041.
Experts from Self Financial reached that figure by studying the number of net closures across the country, which has averaged 1,646 per year as of 2018.
Bank of America defended the closures.
“Our network of financial centers is the core of our business and gives us a strategic advantage,” a spokesperson said.
“So far this year, we have opened more than 40 financial centers across the country.
“We routinely adjust the location of our centers based on visitor traffic to each location. Nearly all of the closures in 2024 were to merge two nearby centers into one, or to move a financial center to a new location to better serve our customers.”
Research by GoBanking Rates found that two in three seniors now prefer mobile or online banking to in-person banking.
Meanwhile, 23 percent of adults aged 18 to 24 visited a bank just once in the past year.
“Our latest research into the future of banking has shown that a growing number of Americans – across all generations – are choosing mobile banking over traditional banking,” Andrew Murray, principal researcher at GOBankingRates, told Daily Mail.com.
US banks closed a total of 754 locations in the first nine months of the year
The banking giant closed 132 branches between January and the end of September 2024
“All of this shows the clear trend that traditional banking is becoming much less common for Americans of all generations,” Murray said.
Even though the majority of Americans now choose to do most of their banking online, customers still prefer to use physical branches for certain services.
It’s also a struggle for some older customers to operate services like mobile banking.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans still use a physical branch to make cash deposits, while more than half use it to talk to a personal advisor, the report found.
39 percent of respondents told Self Financial that they trusted banks with physical branches more than banks without.