America’s No. 2 bank left Boise long ago. It just returned with 4 branches. Why?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Bank of America re-entered the Boise market with a $26M investment in 4 branches.
- Boise area banking deposits doubled in 10 years despite branch declines, per FDIC.
- Bank of America aims to offer in-person financial advice amid shift to digital.
Bank of America is returning to the Boise area after a long absence.
The bank, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the second-biggest bank in the nation after JPMorgan Chase, as measured by deposits and total assets. But for over a decade, it had no bank branches, or what it calls financial centers, in the Treasure Valley.
That just changed. In June, the bank opened a new financial center in Nampa. Then it opened two in Meridian, one at the corner of Chinden Boulevard and Linder Road and the other at The Village at Meridian. It also opened a fourth financial center across from Panera Bread at the Franklin Towne Plaza in Boise.
The bank spent $26 million to open the four branches. It’s part of the bank’s plan, announced in May, to open more than 150 new locations by the end of 2027.
If you haven’t seen the inside of a bank branch in years, you might be scratching your head and asking: Why?
Branch banking has been on the decline, in large part because of the rise of online banking. Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the U.S., closed two branches in Boise earlier this year after shuttering three other Idaho branches, including one in the Treasure Valley, between October 2023 and April 2024. U.S. Bank said just a few months ago that it plans to close eight branches in Idaho, including three in Boise, by the end of the year.
Number of branches goes down, deposits go up
There are fewer than 77,000 branches nationwide, down from nearly 100,000 in 2009, according to The American Banker. The trade publication wrote in December that “banks are once again closing branches rapidly.”
And despite the Treasure Valley’s rapid population growth over the past decade, the area has fewer bank branches, too. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s most recent annual report on banks’ local market shares said the Boise metropolitan statistical area had 148 bank offices as of June 30, 2024, down from 184 offices 10 years earlier.
Still, as other big banks retreat, Bank of America is leaning in. That might be because, as the area loses branches, it’s getting a lot more deposits. The FDIC reported that banks in the Boise area market held $16.8 billion in deposits a year ago, up from $8.6 billion a decade earlier.
Holly O’Neill, the president of consumer retail and preferred banking at Bank of America, told the Idaho Statesman, not in so many words, that the bank wants a piece of booming Boise.
“As we enter new markets, there are all sorts of things that we look at, that being one of them is the growth opportunity and the population dynamics,” O’Neill said Thursday by phone. “Boise is definitely growing, and we felt it was a great market to put our investment in.”
But why did Bank of America leave the Treasure Valley in the first place?
Past FDIC reports show five Bank of America branches in the Boise metropolitan statistical area in 2004, with the bank having the sixth-largest share of deposits of any bank in the market at the time. By 2014, there were none. The bank does have two existing financial centers in Coeur d’Alene in North Idaho.
O’Neill said the bank left the Boise market as part of its divestitures after the 2008 financial crisis.
“We made that decision with the best intentions,” O’Neill said. “We sold the majority of our centers in Idaho, making sure that those branches stayed intact so that we kept the jobs here in Idaho and we didn’t leave the community out a bank. But we are super excited to be back.”
‘Clients are walking in less and less’
Bank of America’s four new Treasure Valley financial centers reflect the changing ways its customers do banking. That the bank refers to its offices as financial centers and not branches is a nod to that shift.
“Our clients walk into our financial centers to do a variety of things, to transact, but also to engage with our specialists for advice and guidance,” O’Neill said. “So we shifted the terminology as that model and that transformation really went full steam ahead, because clients are walking in less and less to transact with us. They’re doing so much more digitally, and they’re engaging us much more around advice and guidance.”
Tom Walding, the bank’s Boise market leader, said the new financial centers are bright, open, modern and contain private offices where customers can get on-site consultations.
The locations still offer foundational bank services like consumer checking, savings and short-term lending with credit cards.
“But beyond that, we provide the advice, the guidance, the direction the individual is looking for, for different stages of their life, whether it be retirement, whether it be scaling a business across Idaho or across the world,” Walding told the Statesman by phone. “We have the full suite and complement of partners. Many of them are here in town, where they can have high-touch, in-person experiences that are going to improve their financial lives.”
Business and Local Government Editor David Staats contributed.
This story was originally published September 5, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
