Am from the future, what is a branch?
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100% will probably close if/when the Federal Reserve and their overlords implement Central Bank Digital Currency. They're already very open about studying it (ripple, etc) and other countries are already much further down this path. At some point depository institutions and commercial banks will get squeezed out of the system.
There won’t be as many, and those still existing will have one person with a tablet manning it.
I work at the SF location in SD. SF is about the only city in SD that is still growing. The rest are what we call rural drift -senior citizens too old to live out on the farm, so they sell it and move to a city where they can do assisted living and be near to their families that moved out of their rural towns long before that. They may show as slightly growing for now but as that generation dies off its going to leave a big gap, and crash many of those towns. We are exploding in growth. We aren't a large metro -I think 200k for the entire metro area plus a few small towns nearby- but towns smaller than the one NW of us are shrinking faster than they want them to.
I hope you're right, but I live in the country and every new neighbor that shows up is from big / medium sized cities. Prices of rural land have been going gangbusters also. Personally I'd be happier if people stayed in cities, I'm just not seeing it on the ground.
Cities are in no way dying. Sure large mega cities are losing people - to slightly smaller cities. And people may leave a big city like Minneapolis and move to…the suburbs of the same metro area or another large metro area suburb, but rural towns are dying.
Starlink isn’t as great as some of you want it to be. Musk also has a history of not quite finishing things before moving on to other things.
Don’t use office availability as a measuring stick either. Loads of jobs are offering WFH options and the people that do that end up sticking around a city where they have the amenities they want. That’s not to say some won’t move rurally - they will - to a rural area just outside of the big city. Vastly rural areas like the plains states have a much tougher future. Apartment rentals/housing is at a premium in cities like Minneapolis, Des Moines, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, etc because it’s in demand.
Branches will get smaller, have fewer staff, and be less common. Having a presence 'out there' is still a thing, Apple, Google, and Amazon all have varying degrees of existing / planned physical presence, so I wouldn't say retail is dead quite yet even in the tech world.
uhhh, no. WFH + Starlink means people will be bailing on urban $-holes like never before and the more people live rural lives, the more local business they will need. Checked out office space availability in the big city lately? NY? Minneapolis? It's the cities that are dying, not the country.
Seconded. Corporate America is abandoning rural areas almost entirely. They cant churn through employees as fast as they can in cities, and cities offer more multilingual/multicultural opportunities. Ai and Automated business procedures will wash over those areas like a tsunami. They do not care about the devastation it brings. We have lots of small rural towns in Texas and they are emptying out as if they were on fire.
What are branches?
I’d say at least 75% close. Small rural cities and towns are screwed for just about all brick and mortar stores really. Digital is the only way forward for banking. They are competing against crypto and other fintech with better profit margins because of less of a physical footprint.