When People’s United Bank decided to close a branch in tiny Huntington following its acquisition of United Bank, customers cried out.
In response, Westfield Bank bought the Route 20 location and plans to open a branch of its own there.
And when TD Bank announced it would close its branch in Springfield’s Mason Square at the end of January, the community cried out.
City and state officials and even members of Congress got involved, fearing a “banking services desert” where folks might have to use high-cost prepaid cards instead of checking accounts. It would be, according to state Sen. James Welch, D-West Springfield, as bad as a “food desert,” where folks have access to packaged junk food but no fresh fruits and veggies.
The message of both episodes is clear: customers might like online banking and mobile apps, but they still want access to face-to-face services.
“People still need to see you,” said John F. Heaps Jr., president and CEO of Florence Bank, who will retire in May after 25 years of leading his bank. “I’ve used to term ‘bricks equal clicks.’”
Kevin Day, Florence Bank’s chief financial officer, said the physical bank branch gives people peace of mind.
“One is problem solving, one is advice,” Day said. “You can’t stick a card in a machine and get advice. But you can at one of our branches. The Valley is a place where people like to talk to each other.”
Florence Bank opened a branch in Springfield’s Sixteen Acres neighborhood in late 2018 and renovated its older offices to have fewer teller lines and more modern amenities.
Maybe soon you can get advice not from a machine, but through a machine. Holyoke-based PeoplesBank is one of the banks installing higher-tech teller machines that connect users via video with staffers working in a remote location.
An old name in banking disappeared in 2019. That’s the constant in an industry where mergers and acquisitions are frequent. United Bank’s roots in West Springfield went back to 1882.
People’s United Financial bought United Financial Bancorp, the holding company for United Bank, in July for $759 million. It rebranded the locations with People’s United logos. It will close three Springfield-area branches in addition to the Huntington location:
- a former United Bank branch at 1355 Boston Road in Springfield
- a former United Bank branch at 1414 Main St. in Springfield, at Monarch Place
- a location at 85 Elm St. in West Springfield that People’s United bought in 2018 from Farmington Bank
Meanwhile, an old name came back. New Valley Bank, the first startup bank in Springfield in 11 years, opened for business in 2019 with two offices. One is in Monarch Place and one is in Sixteen Acres. Valley Bank was the name of a long-gone bank in Springfield.
Matthew Sosik, president CEO of Hometown Financial Group in Easthampton, a holding company that does business locally as bankESB, said local banks can take advantage of mergers like United Bank and Peoples’ United by picking up customers who don’t want to deal with a larger institution.
Not that Hometown Financial hasn’t made some acquisitions itself, including Pilgrim Bank in Cohasset, Abington Bank and Milbury Savings Bank.
“We are going to be focused in 2020 in assimilating those brands,” Sosik said. “And making sure that we’ve normalized our operation, and then we’ll look at other growth opportunities.”
A new bankESB branch opens in downtown Amherst sometime early this year.
"We are still looking, always looking. Very bullish on Western Mass and Pioneer Valley," he said.
Heaps said Florence Bank will open its newest branch in Chicopee — at the former Hu Ke Lau site on Memorial Drive — in the fall. There will be other locations, Heaps said, but he had nothing to announce.
Northampton Cooperative Bank opened a new location in South Hadley late in 2019.
PeoplesBank will open a banking center at 450 Center St. in Ludlow in the third quarter, said Matthew Bannister, first vice president for marketing and innovation. Ludlow is a new market for PeoplesBank. The location is a former Mobil station near Starbucks at Exit 7 of the Massachusetts Turnpike.
In another new market, PeoplesBank will open in Enfield, Connecticut, in early 2021 and at the corner of Lyman and Newton streets in South Hadley in the latter half of 2020.
PeoplesBank bought Connecticut’s First National Bank of Suffield in 2018 and integrated those operations into its own in 2019. The Suffield locations changed brands to become First Suffield Bank, a division of PeoplesBank. PeoplesBank renovated its offices in East Granby, Connecticut, in December.
In Holyoke, Peoples Bank opened its new banking center at the site of the former Yankee Pedlar restaurant in 2019. The bank preserved and restored the Hildreth House, which was at the heart of the Pedlar, and converted it into community meeting space.
PeopelsBank closed two offices in Holyoke and merged operations into the Pedlar center. Bannister said the bank in the second quarter will add a video-enabled teller machine at the former Highland Street branch, replacing the standard ATM there now.
The fate of the building on that property is undetermined, as is the fate of the former South Street branch, Banister said.
