From “Expanding into New Markets: Strategies for Growth and Optimization,” a Curinos webinar on September 9, 2025, presented in conjunction with the brand experience company Adrenaline. The webinar featured Andrew Hovet, Curinos managing director, and Ben Hopper, Adrenaline managing director.
What a difference a year or two makes. Until recently, network planning was all about harvesting, consolidating and repurposing. Today, the branch is back. But to optimize the investment in de novo or reimagined branches, network planners need to have firm objectives in mind and understand the tradeoffs. For example, harvesting may still be appropriate in certain markets if it funds the right kind of expansion. And branches may be called for in thin markets if their locations can spur unaided awareness that, in turn, can spur market development.
With the quality of customers acquired through digital means continuing to flag, branches remain the most dependable source for new customers and deposits that will stay on the books. FIs are rediscovering that these “front doors” need refocused attention to ensure ongoing retail profitability. For all their challenges and differences in quantifiable value, branches matter, and will continue to.
The webinar presented strategies for leveraging today’s branch networks to drive customer growth through retail planning and network expansion. Here are some of the highlights:
1. Branches are back! Banks are investing in them unlike anything we’ve seen in 20 years.
After many years of harvesting, the industry has now followed J.P. Morgan Chase’s lead in reinvesting in the branch network. At first it seemed that only national banks with sufficient brand awareness could enter new markets with de novo branches, but recently banks of all sizes and stripes have followed suit. After more than five years of mostly closures, the trend has reversed. Branches continue to close, to be sure, but, increasingly, these disinvestments provide funding for investments elsewhere.
Trend in Branch Banking: Away from Harvesting, Back to Growth
Source: Curinos Analysis
2. Digital acquisition was intended to offset the impact of network optimization, but the quality of its acquired customers has been sorely lacking.
Picking up a digital customer for one lost through branch optimization has not been a fair trade. Even though digital represents 37% of new checking relationships, branch-originated balances are initially almost nine times greater than those originated digitally and 6.6 times greater after six months. After 12 months, fewer than four in 10 digital checking relationships have remained on the books compared with almost three-quarters of those originated in branches. For traditional banks, a retail presence continues to anchor the acquisition of deposits of value. Digitally generated deposits and relationships have been shown to be a bonus rather than a sustainable replacement for lost branch sales.
Source(s): Curinos Digital Benchmarking 1-mo/6-mos/12-mos based on 4Q2024, 2Q2024 and 4Q2023
3. Gaps in network planning create uncertainty and inefficiency.
If there were a poster child for the need for integrated, non-siloed discipline, it’s in network planning. One missing link in the chain will endanger the whole. Analytics are great, but if they don’t inform strategy—because their findings may not be understood or believed—the strategy is disconnected from fact-based market potential. That can lead to branch design that’s nothing more than aesthetics because it may not reflect the appropriate research-based customer experience. Either or both disconnects can mean that your branch personnel, no matter how earnest and dedicated, will be investing much of their time and talent in misguided pursuits that lead to suboptimal performance.
4. To achieve disproportionate unaided awareness, de novo branches and relocations need to deliver high “billboard value.”
As the functional value of the branch declines—moving away from transactions and more toward advice (while maintaining its role in product sales)—market presence in the form of “billboard value” can play an outsize role in creating unaided awareness. Curinos has scored block groups, and branches within those block groups using mobile geo-analytic data from cell phone use, for their proximity to people conducting commerce, whether shopping, receiving services or dining out. The differences in consumer traffic by geographic area, and therefore the potential to be noticed, are striking. Among the top ten banks measured in Kansas City, for example, three-quarters of the branches are in the top quintile for “visits near” a branch—eight time higher than the middle quintile—even though they represent only 26% of all branches. Clearly, billboard value shouldn’t be the only consideration for branch expansion, but for lasting brand recognition, especially in relatively thin markets, it’s an important one. And the more the unaided awareness builds, the less a bank will need to be reliant over time on those branches with low concentrations of “visits near,” which could add to the case for disinvesting of them.
“Visits Near” by Branch Quintile – Top 10 Banks in Kansas City
Source(s): Curinos Analysis, Curinos NovaLocation
Note: Visits Near represent cell phone devices visiting retailers nearby to bank branch
5. Organizational alignment is critical for the success of retail delivery—lead from the front!
One of the most important outputs that needs to come out of network planning is stakeholder alignment. Executives, board members, branch leadership and branch managers all need to understand and agree on and the value of retail to the organization. It’s not about operating separately or even overlapping. It’s about the integration of all functional elements into retail delivery, which in turn is completely consonant with the enterprise’s strategy and the brand experience that it delivers. The head of retail should be building a very strong shared vision for the retail organization and that vision should be so strong that partners in HR, market and brand, technology and facilities alike can’t help but get involved. Only then can those who matter most in the organization get behind the difficult decisions or investing or divesting, and where.
The Importance of Organizational Alignment to Retail Planning and Delivery
