What Drives Bank Branch Closures?
Bank Nerd Corner welcomes Rajesh Narayanan, a professor in the Department of Finance at Louisiana State University. Rajesh recently coauthored a paper titled “The Decline of Branch Banking,” which was presented at the 2025 Community Bank Research Conference.
Kiah and Rajesh discuss how the restructuring of the U.S. bank branch network is driven primarily by deposit activity, not lending. Rajesh explains how interest rates and depositors’ comfort with digital banking increasingly factor into the value that banks derive from their deposit franchise. The paper found that banks are more likely to…
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