When Huntington Bank opened a branch at 901 Savannah Highway in West Ashley on Sept. 14, it moved into an address Bank of America had left in October 2025.

The swap sums up the year in Charleston-area banking. Banks opened 11 branches in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties from January through September, and two closed, according to a Charleston Business Report review of Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. records. Huntington and JPMorgan Chase accounted for eight of the openings.

The new offices are chasing a growing pool of money. Deposits at bank offices in the Charleston-North Charleston metro area totaled $25.6 billion on June 30, up 11% from a year earlier, according to a Charleston Business Report analysis of the FDIC’s annual Summary of Deposits. They grew 6.4% the year before.

There were 206 bank offices in the metro area on June 30, up from 198 a year earlier, run by 37 banks, the analysis shows.

Huntington’s Lowcountry push

Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington opened its first full-service Charleston branch, at 677 King St., in February 2025, FDIC records show. It has added four more in 2026: Summerville on July 20, North Mount Pleasant on Aug. 31, West Ashley on Sept. 14 and Mount Pleasant Towne Centre on Sept. 28.

That gives the bank five branches in the Lowcountry and seven in South Carolina, according to the FDIC. The Towne Centre branch is in the former TGI Fridays restaurant at 1835 N. Highway 17, which Huntington planned to renovate, The Post and Courier reported in 2025.

“As Huntington continues to grow across the Lowcountry, we are excited to welcome customers to our first Summerville branch,” Jennifer Schuchart, the bank’s Charleston market president, said in July.

Huntington has said it plans to open about 55 branches across North Carolina and South Carolina. The bank announced in 2024 that it also aimed to hire 350 workers in the Carolinas, The Post and Courier reported.

Its King Street branch held $110 million in deposits on June 30, up from $48.6 million a year earlier, according to the FDIC.

Summerville draws the most

JPMorgan Chase opened four branches between May 5 and June 23: one on Rivertowne Parkway in Mount Pleasant, one on Nexton Parkway, one on North Main Street near Carnes Crossroads and one on Central Avenue in Summerville’s Knightsville area, FDIC records show. Chase had 13 branches in the metro area on June 30, up from nine a year earlier, with $548 million in deposits, the Charleston Business Report analysis shows.

Five of the year’s 11 openings have Summerville addresses. First National Bank of Pennsylvania opened a branch on North Main Street in Summerville in February and another in West Ashley in April. Coastal States Bank, based on Hilton Head Island, opened a Mount Pleasant branch on West Coleman Boulevard in August, which the FDIC lists as a limited-service drive-through facility.

Not every bank is expanding. Bank of America closed its Ashley Crossing branch in West Ashley on Aug. 18, and Pinnacle Bank closed a Goose Creek branch June 30, according to the FDIC. Bank of America had 12 branches in the metro area on June 30, down from 14 a year earlier. Its 200 Meeting St. branch closed in November 2025, a week after the Savannah Highway office.

Mergers reshuffle the rankings

Wells Fargo held the largest share of the region’s deposits on June 30, 20%, or $5.1 billion, up from 18.4% a year earlier, the Charleston Business Report analysis shows. Bank of America was second at 14%, followed by SouthState Bank at 12.3% and Pinnacle at 9.2%.

Pinnacle’s share rose from 5.4% because it absorbed Synovus Bank’s Charleston-area branches on Jan. 2, FDIC records show. Synovus held 4% of the region’s deposits a year earlier.

Smaller deals changed names on the door, too. TowneBank of Portsmouth, Virginia, took over Dogwood State Bank’s Mount Pleasant office in January, and Kansas City-based Commerce Bank took over FineMark National Bank & Trust’s office on Daniel Island, according to the FDIC. On Oct. 1, Beacon Community Bank merged into Coastal Carolina National Bank, and its six offices became Coastal Carolina branches, FDIC records show. The two banks’ parent companies agreed to merge earlier this year.

The FDIC figures count deposits at the office where each bank books them, which can pile money up at a single office. Wells Fargo’s office at 16 Broad St. alone reported $2.5 billion.

The Summary of Deposits is a once-a-year snapshot, so it does not yet reflect Huntington’s four new branches or the Beacon merger. The next one will show deposits as of June 30, 2027.