Mark Crandall, TD Bank’s regional president for southern New England, says an increasing number of consumers would prefer to do their banking via smart phones instead of branches.
TD Bank’s recent branch-expansion strategy hasn’t exactly worked out as planned.
Even though the state’s fourth largest bank has built brand new branches from the ground up in a number of key Boston-area towns, it has also quietly closed 14 branches over the past two years, as part of a consolidation plan and general acknowledgement that customers are increasingly relying on mobile apps for many of their banking needs.
“I’m not going to use the word ‘reassess,’ but certainly our retail banking strategy has evolved,” said Mark Crandall, TD Bank’s regional president for southern New England. “The fact is, fewer and fewer people are walking into branches these days.”
TD’s new attitude toward branches, which it calls “stores,” is strikingly different from what it was pronouncing two years ago, when it was still in the midst of a major expansion of branches in the region. In recent years, TD has added four branches in Boston and in high-profile locations in Marlborough, Quincy, Sudbury and Weymouth, sometimes even constructing entirely new branch buildings from scratch.
But over the past two years, TD Bank, owned by Canada’s TD Bank Group, has also been quietly shuttering some branches, reducing its total branches in Massachusetts to a net 147, down from 153 in 2012.
The bank didn’t provide details about the closures and where they occurred. But the closings largely explain why TD Bank’s headcount of employees in Massachusetts has fallen by about 300 workers over the past two years. TD now employs about 1,900 people in Massachusetts. TD Bank deliberately shuttered branches that were near other TD branches to minimize potential inconveniences to customers, TD officials said.