First Citizens Bank has completed its purchase of 138 branches from BMO Bank, N.A., taking on roughly $5 billion in deposits and $650 million in loans across North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Idaho, western Minnesota, eastern Oregon and southern Illinois. The branches converted to First Citizens systems on September 4. The deal pushes First Citizens past $225 billion in total assets and more than 600 branches nationwide, ranking it among the top 20 U.S. banks by size.
The acquisition matters because it is branch consolidation running in the opposite direction from most of this year’s banking headlines. While digitally native lenders buy charters and community banks chase blockchain consortiums, First Citizens is doing something plainer: buying physical distribution in states where BMO chose to retreat. “This expansion reflects our disciplined approach to growth, welcoming talented associates who share our relationship-first culture,” said Frank B. Holding, Jr., First Citizens’ chairman and chief executive. Hope Holding Bryant, vice chairwoman and head of general bank, added that serving the newly acquired markets “begins with understanding the people, businesses and communities that make each one unique.”
The original insight is what this deal says about where branch banking still has a buyer. BMO’s exit from ten Midwest and Great Plains states is not a story about branches becoming obsolete; it is a story about which banks want them. First Citizens, which has built its growth strategy on serial acquisitions rather than organic branch construction, sees enough remaining value in rural and small-metro deposit relationships to commit five regional executives and roughly $1 million in local community investment to the new footprint. Even de novo banks are now launching with a single branch rather than a network, which makes First Citizens’ bet on a 138-branch physical footprint a deliberate contrarian call, not an inherited legacy cost. It is the branch-banking mirror image of fintechs buying banks outright to skip the charter process: both are bets that acquiring existing infrastructure beats building it.
Source: PR Newswire
