PROVIDENCE – JPMorgan Chase & Co. will open retail banking branches in Greater Boston and Rhode Island, the company announced Monday.
Chase branch operations in the area will start in December in Massachusetts and expand over the next year.
The plan calls for Chase to open 50 branches in Greater Boston and an additional eight to 10 branches in Rhode Island. The bank’s first Rhode Island branches are planned to open in Providence in about a year, Chase executives told Providence Business News.
As part of the expansion, the bank said it will lend an additional $3 billion to small businesses and people who want to buy a home, including in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.
The company already has commercial, investment, and private banking operations in the region. It has built a large base of customers that it now wants to also serve with brick-and-mortar retail banking offices, in addition to attracting new customers.
“We want to be where our customers live, work, and shop,” said Chase Consumer Banking CEO Thasunda Duckett.
Ranked as the sixth-largest bank in the world based on assets, Chase will be the largest bank to have retail operations in Rhode Island. Currently, the largest banks in the retail market here are Bank of America, ranked as the world’s ninth-largest, and Banco Santander, ranked the 16th-largest, according to various sources.
Duckett indicated the decision to open the 60 retail branches and about 130 automated teller machines in the Boston-Providence region was tied to the extra cash banks have on hand this year from corporate tax cuts and relaxed banking regulations under the Trump administration.
While many of the Chase branch locations have not yet been determined, the company plans to open a branch in Providence’s downtown business district as well as near Brown University, said John McGinley, Chase Consumer Banking’s head of real estate.
In addition to the eight to 10 Chase branches planned for Rhode Island, the company expects to operate 25 to 30 ATMs in the state – some likely to open before branches begin opening next year, McGinley said.
In the region, Chase’s first retail banking outlet is slated to open in mid-December in Dedham. The bank will establish a presence along the Boston to Providence corridor, McGinley said, while extending its current retail presence in Connecticut into southern Rhode Island.
Chase also is looking at opening branches in southern New Hampshire, he said.
Also known as consumer banking, retail banking is typical mass-market banking that offers individual customers checking and savings accounts, debit and credit cards, mortgages, personal loans, and certificates of deposit.
“We always wanted to be in the [eastern] New England region,” Duckett said.
Scott Blake is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Blake@PBN.com
