Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citizens and Chase among US banks that filed to shut 18 branches in just one week – is YOURS affected

Wells Fargo this month announced the closure of eight branches in a single week, joining eight other banks to close a total of 18.

Meanwhile, Chase continued to buck the industry-wide trend by announcing it would open eight.

They were in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, South Carolina and Utah.

Only one other bank said it would open a branch, Wintrust Bank in Chicago. This brought the total openings to nine, half the number of scheduled closures.

Therefore, banks continue to close branches much faster than they open them, focusing on closing rural locations and consolidating around cities.

Chase has been an outlier among major banks because it has been steadily increasing the number of branches.

The Wells Fargo closures between March 10 and 16, reported to its regulator the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)They ranged between Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina, North Carolina and Texas.

Overall, Wells Fargo has been leading the way when it comes to bank branch closures.

Last year it notified the regulator that it would close 312 branches, more than any other bank in the country. It opened only 22 throughout the year.

Added to this is US Bank, which this year has already said it would close a total of more than 50.

In the first two months of the year, a DailyMail.com analysis showed that banks had submitted applications to close 222 branches.

The average independent bank branch costs around $2.6 million a year, so being able to close them and encourage customers to bank online can lead to big savings.

The last time the number of commercial bank branches in the U.S. increased was in 2011, when there were more than 85,000, according to FDIC data.

Since then, the number of physical branches has decreased fairly steadily to around 70,000.

This year, Chase said it would open 500 branches across the United States over the next three years, and last year it was the only major bank to open more branches than it closed.

Chase opened 195 branches between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22, nearly six times more than Bank of America, which came in second by opening 32.