Truist Financial plans to open 100 branches and renovate 300 existing locations in high-growth markets, mostly in the Southeast, as part of an effort to boost its mass-affluent customer base.
The North Carolina-based regional bank will also hire more financial advisors to serve those clients, modernize its ATMs and deploy more AI-related tools and capabilities, it said Wednesday.
The number of “premier” advisors, whose clients have $100,000 to $1 million in deposits or assets under management at Truist, is expected to grow by 20% between now and 2030, following a 50% increase over the past five months.
The target markets include the Sun Belt hot spots Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Miami, Orlando and Charlotte, where Truist is based. Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., are also on the bank’s list.
Truist is referring to the 100 new locations as “insights-driven” branches. The model will offer “smart design, integrated technology and modern layouts to create dedicated space for conversations” with advisors, the bank said in the press release.
“Everything is centered around what our clients and our prospects are telling us,” Dontá Wilson, Truist’s chief consumer and small-business banking officer, told American Banker. “They want to be digitally empowered … and they also place a lot of value on engaging with us in person in branches in moments when they want advice and expertise on making big financial decisions.”
The $537 billion-asset bank, which spent part of 2023 and all of 2024 in cost-cutting mode, declined to say how much it will cost to open and renovate offices, and hire more advisors.
The associated costs are already “baked into” its existing profitability targets, Wilson said.
As for the number of new branches to be built in each of the target markets and the specific locations of the new and to-be renovated branches, that information will be shared at a later date, he said.
Truist is the latest bank to announce branch openings that are largely concentrated in the Southeast. Last week, Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati opened its first branch in Alabama, one of 200 locations it plans to launch in the Southeast by the end of 2028.
Huntington Bancshares in Columbus, Ohio, said earlier this year that it expects to open 55 branches in North Carolina and South Carolina over a three-year period. And last fall, PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh said it would open more than 100 branches in Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, Phoenix, Raleigh and Tampa, expanding on the company’s previously announced strategy to open 100 branches in Austin, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Miami and San Antonio.
Meanwhile, JPMorganChase is tripling its branch footprint in Alabama over the next five years.
Some banks, including Fifth Third, have been closing branches in certain parts of the country to offset the cost of expanding elsewhere, including in the Southeast.
Read more about Truist here: https://www.americanbanker.com/organization/truist-financial
Truist currently operates 1,931 branches in 17 states and Washington, D.C., according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Less than two years ago, the bank shrank its branch network by 4% when it closed about 80 offices as part of a $750 million expense-reduction initiative.
The company did not immediately respond to a question about whether it plans to close branches in certain markets, even as it is opening them in the identified high-growth markets.
Truist is sitting on excess capital since last year’s sale of its insurance brokerage. Its second-quarter common equity Tier 1 ratio was 11%, well above its 7% minimum requirement.
Even as the bank has been building out its digital capabilities, executives have been talking throughout this year about investing in talent, technology and certain under-tapped markets. Earlier this year, it added a middle-market banking team in New Jersey.
Truist has also identified Pennsylvania and Texas as places where it expects to drum up more business.
The bank has been “transitioning from defense to offense” in recent years, and the new-branch plan announced Wednesday is similar to how it has “expanded and strengthened its middle market, commercial and corporate businesses,” Scott Siefers, an analyst at Piper Sandler, said in a research note. He called the branch plans “another important, symbolic touchpoint.”
At an industry conference in June, Truist CEO Bill Rogers said the branch network is “an area that you’re going to see us lean into a little bit more as we go forward.”
