The jostling in lower Fairfield County is about to get a little more aggressive as yet another big bank fulfills plans to expand there. Citigroup – which already has eight retail branches in Fairfield County – is opening two more over the next several months.
The move is part of the bank’s nationwide de novo branching strategy. The two branches in downtown Stamford and Ridgefield will join recent expansion in Fairfield County by New Jersey-based Commerce Bank.
“[The expansion] would be the equivalent of financial musical chairs, where when the music stops, there’s no place left to sit down,” said John Carusone, president of the Hartford-based Bank Analysis Center. “Every bank and their dog wants to be in southern Connecticut.”
Fairfield County seemingly has a glut of banks of every size. Citigroup told representatives from the research firm CreditSights that it has steadily held market share in its core checking-account-type deposits, while losing ground in higher-yielding time deposits, according to a CreditSights report. The company has held its ground in the New York City market, but needs to grow its presence in core suburban New York metropolitan markets, including Connecticut.
‘Organic Growth’
Citigroup already competes all over Connecticut with various lending operations, so the growth may not be too difficult, according to Carusone. But with the quantity of big banks in Connecticut – including Bank of America and Wachovia – another couple of Citigroup branches likely will not make much of a competitive difference to the state’s community banks, Carusone said.
According to CreditSights, Citigroup began a steady de novo growth strategy last year, and intends to accelerate its growth in 2006 and 2007. The company has opened about 30 branches in the past 12 months, including one in Norwalk, which opened in April.
“We’re focused on organic growth in the [United States],” said Citigroup spokesman Mark Rogers.
The growth strategy came about because of recent restructuring of the institution’s management, according to the CreditSights report. The new leadership of Citigroup’s consumer segment is focusing on delivering loan products through retail branches, although the institution does remain behind some others – like Bank of America and Wells Fargo – that commonly use that model.