PNC bank has closed its branch in Graham, at 832 South Main Street, near its intersection with East Crescent Square Drive.
PNC closed the Graham branch on May 21 of this year, PNC Bank spokesperson Marcie Zwiebel has confirmed for The Alamance News.
A company policy does not allow for disclosure of the number of employees who are affected by branch closures, according to Zwiebel, director of corporate public relations for PNC Bank at its headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“While we do not provide employment figures on a location-specific basis, I can share that when PNC closes a branch, we do our best to reassign staff to other positions within PNC,” Zwiebel told the newspaper Wednesday. PNC Bank employees who worked at the Graham branch were given the option to move to another branch or a different position, she said.
The PNC branch on South Church Street in Burlington is the bank’s last remaining brick-and-mortar location in Alamance County, PNC’s spokesperson confirmed for the newspaper Wednesday.
Changes in consumer banking preferences have accelerated plans that PNC Bank had previously announced to close 280 branches by the end of this year, PNC Bank chairman and CEO William Demchak noted late last year during an online financial services industry conference. The planned branch closures represent a decrease of about 12 percent in the 2,300 brick-and-mortar locations that PNC Bank had at the beginning of 2020, Demchak said.
PNC closed total of 170 PNC branches, including 10 in North Carolina, last year, based on regulatory filings, the Charlotte Business Journal reported earlier this year. PNC also closed branches in Gastonia, Wilmington, and in the Asheville area earlier this year, the Business Journal reported.
Covid-19 – and the nationwide lockdown in place throughout much of last year – has accelerated PNC’s plans to focus more attention on online banking services, according to a report that ran last fall in American Banker, the daily trade newspaper for the financial services industry. The shift to online banking is part of a growing trend within the financial services sector, numerous media outlets have reported in recent years.
PNC Bank had operated the Graham branch since 2012, following its acquisition of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) in 2011, based on news articles that ran at the time. The bank building at 832 South Main Street originally opened in 1990, with ownership changing hands several times since due to subsequent bank mergers.
Zwiebel assured the newspaper this week that PNC notifies its customers 90 days in advance of any planned branch closure or consolidation. “On that basis, there are no other branches in Alamance County that have been identified for consolidation to date, nor have any other branches in the county been consolidated earlier this year,” she said Wednesday.
Zwiebel emphasized that PNC is continuing to see an increase in demand for digital banking services.
“There are more ways to bank with PNC than ever before,” she said, “and we continue to see our customers taking advantage of the investments we have made in non-branch channels…Shifts in the way customers are conducting their banking transactions are important [factors] that inform our branch consolidation efforts.”
In addition to the Edgewood Village branch on South Church Street, the spokesperson said that PNC Bank continues to operate four ATMs within a five-mile radius of Graham through which clients can conduct transactions without having to pay a fee.
