Why BofA Is Betting on Branches

Featuring: Will Smayda, Head of Financial Centers at Bank of America

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 by 50 percent. Physical presence isn’t competing with digital — it’s accelerating it.
Now, Bank of America is putting $750 million behind a bet the rest of the industry walked away from too soon, opening 150 new 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 smarter ones.

These next-generation 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 — at least not yet.

My guest on the Banking Transformed podcast, Will Smayda, leads 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 the most expensive contradiction in banking?