When Huntington announced last fall it planned to close its Buckeye Road branch, a committee of residents decided to fight back. While publicly protesting such a shuttering may be infrequent in Greater Cleveland, branch closings have not been.
Branch closings in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County accelerated between 2013 and 2023, according to a Signal Cleveland analysis of data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which regulates banks. Branches closed in Cleveland at nearly twice the rate as they did in the rest of Cuyahoga County.
“Closing branches doesn’t send a good signal to neighborhoods that have had a history of redlining and disinvestment, particularly when they’re losing branches at a greater rate than suburban ZIP codes,” said Charles Bromley, a member of Keep Huntington on Buckeye, the citizens’ committee still lobbying to keep the branch from permanently closing in the city’s Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood.
While we remain committed to our branch network, we are responding to changing customer preference. For many years, customers have been looking for more self-service options for added convenience.
Kris Dahl, Huntington’s vice president of regional communications
For Bromley, who has fought for fair lending and against branch closings for 50 years, the loss of urban branches is potentially more problematic than suburban ones closing. Among the reasons is that low- and even moderate-income customers are less likely to use mobile banking, which allows customers to bank via a smartphone app, than their more affluent counterparts. Those of more modest income are also more likely to use a branch as the primary way to access their accounts. Data, including from the FDIC, points to these differences in banking habits.
Cleveland lost nearly 30% of its branches since 2013
Cleveland had almost 30% fewer branches in 2023 than 10 years earlier, Signal Cleveland’s analysis found. The city roughly had about 170 branches, ranging from national to locally based banks. The county, excluding Cleveland, also had about 170 branches, about 16% fewer than in 2013.
The FDIC data Signal Cleveland analyzed included full-service bank offices such as brick-and-mortar branches as well as limited service facilities such as drive-throughs. The analysis covers 2013 through June 2023. We contacted the three banks with the most branches in Cleveland and the rest of Cuyahoga County, based on our analysis.
In Cleveland they were: KeyBank, Huntington and U.S. Bank. In Cuyahoga County they were: Huntington, KeyBank and Citizens. In each case, the banks said that they had closed branches in response to the ways that most customers now bank. This is part of a national trend. Online and mobile banking have often replaced branch visits. If customers need cash, in what many consider is becoming an increasingly cashless society, an ATM can handle the task.
The FDIC data points to digital banking’s impact in the past 10 years. Cuyahoga, minus Cleveland, had 201 branches in 1994, the same number it had in 2013. Signal Cleveland used 1994 as a reference point because it is the earliest data available for the analysis. By 2023, the number was 169.
Cleveland began losing branches long before mobile banking became a thing. Still, the loss jumped after 2013. Cleveland had 273 branches in 1994, but only 238 by 2013. By 2023, the city had 171 branches.
Change in Bank Branches, 1994-2023
Low-income customers were more likely to rely on a branch than mobile banking
Technology has changed the way we bank. It has brought disruption as well as convenience.
At Huntington, for example, “ATMs and online and mobile banking continue to meet our customers’ evolving needs,” wrote Kris Dahl, vice president of regional communications, in an email. He said that branches remain in the mix as the bank regularly evaluates and then “makes adjustments and improvements” on how to best meet the needs of customers.
“While we remain committed to our branch network, we are responding to changing customer preference,” he wrote. “For many years, customers have been looking for more self-service options for added convenience.”
Our interactive map shows which branches closed in Cleveland and Cuyahoga between 2013 and 2023.
The FDIC’s latest National Survey of Unbanked and Underbanked Households showed how the pandemic spurred the switch to online and mobile banking, especially in its early days, when many branches were closed or had reduced hours. In 2017, about 15% of people used mobile banking as the primary way to access their bank accounts. By 2021, nearly 44% did.
The survey also showed how income affected who was using mobile banking. Nearly half of those with household incomes of at least $75,000 primarily banked this way. Fewer than 40% of those with family incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 did. The median household income in Cleveland is $37,271, according to the Census.gov. For all of Cuyahoga County, it is $60,074.
Low-income customers were most likely to rely on a branch, the survey found. In 2021, about 25% of customers who made between $15,000 and $30,000 primarily accessed their accounts using a teller. Only about 8% of people making at least $75,000 did.
Huntington bucked local branch-closing trend
Huntington officials did not cite trends in digital banking when the bank initially filed an application with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) last year to permanently close the branch. The bank informed customers the branch was closing because violent crime in the area, some of which had spilled over onto bank property, was putting employees and customers at risk. The citizens committee organized against the closing, including contacting bank regulators and gathering more than 700 signatures on petitions.
The branch temporarily closed in February, but officials said it could reopen six months from then if crime is brought under control. The city recently stepped up police presence in the area with a targeted strategy. The ATM remains open at the Buckeye Road branch, and Huntington is offering transportation to another of its branches for customers who still want to do in-person banking.
Bromley said customers don’t want rides. They want to use tellers at their neighborhood branch.
While Huntington did close branches in Cleveland during the 10-year period Signal reviewed, its pattern went against the overall trend of banks closing a higher percentage of city branches. In Cleveland, Huntington closed nearly 27% of its branches. The bank closed about 36% of its branches in the rest of the county, the analysis found. This left Huntington with 22 branches in Cleveland and 18 in the county.
(Some of the banks Signal Cleveland contacted shared numbers that were different from those in the FDIC data we used. This could have been because the banks used a different time period or included unstaffed locations, such as ATM-only locations. We only used FDIC data in our analysis.)
U.S. Bank closed greater percentage of city branches but still has more city than suburban branches
U.S. Bank followed the trend of closing a higher percentage of branches in Cleveland than in the suburbs: About 43% vs. 31%. The bank had 17 branches in the city and 11 in the county in 2023, the analysis found. Despite closing a higher percentage of branches in Cleveland, U.S. Bank still has more branches in Cleveland than in the rest of the county.
“Generally speaking, the concentration of branches in a metro area was historically higher than that of suburban or rural areas,” wrote Evan A. Lapiska, the bank’s vice president of public affairs and corporate communications, in an email. “This would speak to the number of closures being higher yet the number of branches remaining still higher in the city.“
Cleveland and the rest of Cuyahoga County had about the same number of branches in 2023, even though the city represents about 30% of the county’s close to 1.3 million population.
Despite the sizable loss of branches in both the city and county, neither fits the definition of a banking desert. The Federal Reserve defines a banking desert as a census tract without a physical bank branch within a certain radius from its population center. This is two miles in urban areas, five miles in the suburbs, and 10 miles for rural communities.
Bromley questions a two-mile radius for urban areas.
“Many people don’t have cars,” he said. “They walk. They walk to the bank. They walk to the Post Office.”
Branch closings could put urban customers at a disadvantage
For those lobbying to keep Huntington’s Buckeye Road branch open, it is more than just a matter of providing convenience for neighborhood residents. Financial inclusion is at the root of their concern. Financial inclusion focuses on people having access to such things as affordable financial services and products that can help them build wealth.
Financial inclusion is usually based on having adequate savings and access to affordable credit and loans. It often includes training on the specifics of wealth-building. Financial inclusion primarily focuses on demographic groups to whom many financial institutions have not historically catered. These include African Americans and other people of color as well as low- and moderate-income households. This resembles the demographics of Buckeye-Shaker residents as well as those in many city neighborhoods.
Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin’s ward includes the Huntington Buckeye branch. He is pushing for the branch to permanently reopen, with a focus on financial inclusion.
“I would like to have a plan in place to see them open back up and see them do some things around financial literacy,” Griffin said of Huntington. “I want to see them invest in homeownership, invest in home repair, invest in small businesses, invest in storefront renovation and these kinds of things.”
Experts disagree about whether “proximity to bank branches promotes financial inclusion,” according to a 2022 paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. While the experts aren’t in agreement, there is still research supporting the role a nearby branch plays in building financial inclusion, the paper found. For example, it notes research showing that lower-income households who lived near a branch had a greater chance of having a bank account.
Griffin, Bromley and others fighting to keep the branch open don’t only want Huntington to target such services for existing customers. They want the bank to pursue new customers, even the unbanked. Unbanked households tend to be lower-income, Black or Hispanic and headed by single mothers, according to the FDIC survey. The survey said that the unbanked are more vulnerable to such things as payday loans and tax refund anticipation loans, both of which usually have high fees and interest rates.
The FDIC survey found that the numbers of unbanked had decreased in recent years because pandemic-related income, such as stimulus payments, “was an important motivator for account openings.”
“Economic inclusion efforts should continue to focus on connecting consumers with safe and affordable accounts at a variety of bankable moments, for example, with receipt of new employment income, tax refunds and government benefits and transfers,” the survey states.
Banks say they haven’t given up on operating branches
Despite the vanishing-branch trend, the banks contacted by Signal Cleveland say they’re not getting out of the business of branches – at least not anytime soon.
In fact, there is a KeyBank nearby on Buckeye Road, not far from the closed Huntington branch. Key had 17 branches in the county, nearly 6% fewer than 10 years earlier, our analysis found. In Cleveland it had 24 branches, about 35% fewer. In an email, the bank stated that it continues “to invest in our branches and our teammates so that we can best serve our clients.”
“Our branches are and will always be a source of strength for Key and our branch teammates are a critical way we differentiate Key in the market, especially across Cuyahoga County,” the email states. “We believe that finding the right balance between physical and digital is how we can best serve our clients – and we’re working hard to deliver that balance in a rapidly changing environment.”
Lapiska of U.S. Bank expressed a similar sentiment.
“[W]e continue to rapidly enhance our digital offerings while also making investments to existing locations, adding new branches, and in some instances, consolidating branch locations in select areas,” he wrote.
Citizens bank said that it was not only putting money into its branches but had also supported financial inclusion-related education. In 2023, the bank said it partnered with 11 non-profit organizations in the region on “financial empowerment programming.” Since the current Citizens didn’t exist in 2013, it is difficult to do an apples to apples comparison regarding 2013 vs. 2023. In 2023, the bank had 16 branches in the city and 17 in the rest of the county, according to the FDIC data.
“While we’ve closed some branches over the years, we are heavily investing in our physical network as part of our overall strategy to help customers bank when, where and how they prefer,” the bank stated in an email.
This includes the use of the Citizens Virtual Assistant. Despite the name, the assistants are people customers can access remotely through Interactive Teller Machines that are similar to video conferencing. The virtual assistants allow “our colleagues to work one-on-one with customers on more complex matters, like lending advice or long-term financial planning,” the bank wrote.
Reimagining a branch’s purpose in a digital banking world
Amid the steady closings of branches nationally in the last decade, some banks are actually opening branches. This is even in neighborhoods with demographics similar to Buckeye-Shaker. Such branches, especially those following a “community center” model, often represent a reimagined concept of a branch, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. They not only have traditional branch features, such as tellers, but also new functions. For example, the branch could serve as a pop-up space for local entrepreneurs or provide financial literacy classes. Admittedly, these branches don’t constitute the majority of the ones banks are opening. Banks are most often in pursuit of higher-income customers or clients with thriving small businesses.
At an invitation-only Feb. 15 meeting, whose attendees included members of Keep Huntington on Buckeye and federal bank regulators, a Huntington official gave preliminary highlights of the bank’s plans for Buckeye-Shaker. They include making a “community investment” in the area to help small businesses with safety improvements to their properties, said bank spokesman Dahl. He said the bank also intended to fund home repairs in the neighborhood. Details are still being worked out.
Bromley said he wants to see a reopened branch that seeks to have strong ties with the community.
“I want them to get to know the neighbors, what they’re doing, what their businesses are, what their dreams and hopes are,” he said. “Go to a couple of church services in the community. Take the manager, the assistant manager or even the regional president out to see the neighborhood. I don’t want anyone to buy into the stereotypes. Buy into the reality.”
Bromley wants the branch to focus on financial inclusion by developing products and policies that would help moderate-income consumers. For example, he said there isn’t incentive for brokers to go after mortgages for moderately priced homes because they offer lower commissions.
“In order to serve moderate-income neighborhoods, banks need to reimagine the compensation system so that brokers aren’t getting punished.”
Bromley, who attended the February meeting, got concerned when he heard more about Huntington making grants to area nonprofits to help residents with home repairs than he heard about the bank committing to make more home improvement and other loans to moderate-income homeowners. After five decades of fighting branch closings, he said banks making such grants is part of a familiar exit strategy.
“They close the branch and they leave a bag of money with community organizations,” Bromley said.
Griffin isn’t against grants, but he also wants to make sure that residents can get home improvement and other types of loans and financial products. He wants to see this happen, even if it means specifically tailoring products to meet demand among area residents.
“We just want a good partner,” he said. “All we want to do is to continue to figure out ways to make them a good partner.”