Chase Bank's new branch in Cambridge's Harvard Square. Photo by James Sanna | Banker & Tradesman Staff

Chase Bank’s massive, five-year branch expansion campaign reached a crescendo yesterday in Harvard Square when it opened its 400th branch since the project was announced in 2018.

The new storefront occupies a pair of back-to-back ground-floor spaces in The Abbot development, with doors on John F. Kennedy Street and Brattle Street.

While they weren’t visible when Banker & Tradesman toured the branch before business hours Thursday, normally visitors walking through those doors are rapidly greeted by a branch staffer, said Racquel Oden, Chase’s head of branch expansion.

Wielding an iPad-like tablet that connects to everything from their personal email to an appointment calendar for each of the branch’s workers through an in-house-designed interface, these associate bankers will be able to do everything from direct customers to an appointment they might have at the bank to work through a problem they’re having, Oden said, likening it to Apple’s customer service model in its own stores.

“When you walk into a branch it can be overwhelming” trying to figure out how to get the service you’re looking for, Oden said. “We think it’s important to de-stress the visit right away.”

That also has meant Chase was able to reduce the number of teller windows down to just two, she explained, with many customer service functions and community events like financial literacy classes taking place in the “living room” space at the heart of the branch. In the Harvard Square branch, this space is furnished with couches, a large television and a combined speaker and multi-camera bar geared towards Zoom meetings.

“This is where staff will have their ‘daily download’ [morning huddle], but we’ll also use it for education with digital banking and digital adoption,” Oden said.

Branch staff – two associate bankers, two relationship bankers and a Chase Private Client wealth adviser – work in glass-walled offices that surround the “living room,” branch manager Yamen Chaker said, with an additional office available for staff who might float among several branches or for regional executives to drop by for a visit.

Despite digital banking services having replaced what would have been regular trips to the bank for many customers, Chase sees its branches as a cornerstone of its “omnichannel” plan to grow its deposit share and market share in wealth management and lending, Oden said. Many of the depositors it’s gained in the course of its branching campaign were first credit card customers, she said, and establishing a branch in a community helps convert them to depositors or borrowers.

“That’s allowed us to enter markets with a strong customer base,” she said.

And, with 75 percent of Chase customers still continuing to visit branches for meeting with bankers by appointment, with home lending advisors, with business advisors or with financial advisors, Oden said an “advice-driven” branch design offers every customer their preferred way to interact with the bank.

“Not many banks can say that,” she said.

Chase’s Harvard Square branch is its 47th in Massachusetts, including a more elaborate “community center” branch in Mattapan Square with extra space for community events, financial and business education seminars and pop-up shops. Another dozen or so more planned to open in Massachusetts through 2024.