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Truist Financial has notified customers that it plans to close several dozen branches in March.
The Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said it will shutter about 4% of its branch network, which amounts to roughly 80 locations. As of Dec. 29, 2023, Truist operated 2,006 branches across 17 states and Washington, D.C., according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
The closures come amid Truist's $750 million cost-cutting initiative, which was announced four months ago. Under pressure to reset its strategy and reduce its expenses, the $543 billion-asset company has consolidated its commercial and community banking regions from 21 to 14, merged its consumer payments and wholesale payments businesses into a single operation and created a unified commercial real estate business from units that used to overlap.
It has also reduced the size of its board of directors, nearly doubled the size of its executive management team, named a new chief operating officer and hired a new chief legal officer.
Truist, which is chartered in North Carolina, has not responded to requests for a complete rundown of upcoming branch closures. But the most recent list of closure applications filed with the North Carolina Commission of Banks show a smattering of impending shutdowns in multiple states, including Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and West Virginia.
In an email, a Truist spokesperson said that nine branches are slated to close in North Carolina and seven are set to close in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. In Georgia, Truist will close eight branches, including four in Atlanta, according to the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
The closures reflect declining branch traffic and transaction volume, the Truist spokesperson said. On average, the sites set to close are located about two-and-a-half miles away from another Truist branch. In the D.C. area, the distance is even smaller, with affected branches located, on average, less than a mile away from another branch, the spokesperson said.
Post-closures, Truist will operate more than 1,900 branches and 2,900 ATMs, the spokesperson said. The company has not disclosed how many jobs will be cut as a result of the shutdowns.
Truist, which is currently the seventh largest U.S. commercial bank by assets, was formed in December 2019 as a result of a "merger of equals" between BB&T in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and SunTrust Banks in Atlanta. The deal was supposed to produce annual cost savings of $1.6 billion by the end of 2022, but rather than declining, expenses have continued to rise.
In July, executives predicted that full-year 2023 expenses would rise 7% year over year, which was one of the highest projected annual upticks among big banks. For 2024, expenses should rise no more than 1% as a result of the current cost-cutting plan, executives have said.
Truist CEO Bill Rogers has said that the $750 million will be taken out over a 12- to 18-month period, which means the initiative could wrap up around the first quarter of 2025.
The largest portion — about $300 million — is expected to be realized through job cuts, with another $250 million coming out via organizational restructuring and the remaining $200 million removed by spending less on technology, the company has said.
