Charlotte Is Buzzing With Big Bank, Fintech Expansions

Japanese financial giant Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. has selected Charlotte as its second U.S. headquarters, with plans to add roughly 2,000 jobs over the next six years.

SMBC is the latest big-name banking institution to plant a major flag in Charlotte, joining JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup as well as a cadre of fintech players that have all announced new investments in the Queen City over the past year.

“Our highly skilled workforce makes businesses want to establish themselves and grow here, and that in turn makes other people want to move and settle here,” North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said Tuesday during a press conference announcing the SMBC deal.

Tokyo-based SMBC committed to invest some $50M to establish its new hub in the city and is expected to receive $70M in state grant funding. 

This latest wave of investment has strengthened the Queen City’s reputation as a financial heavyweight and driven growth across its commercial real estate sectors.

Banks and fintechs are choosing to invest in Charlotte because they believe the city has reached a critical mass that is continually drawing and retaining a highly skilled workforce. The metro area netted 54,000 residents from 2024 to 2025 to reach 2.9 million by July. That growth rate ranks fifth among all U.S. metro areas, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.  

Such a steady growth of the workforce is compelling for companies seeking to relocate, according to Peter Gwaltney, CEO and president of the North Carolina Bankers Association. Charlotte ranked second in Site Selection’s most recent annual survey of best U.S. cities for corporate headquarters. 

“A company can locate or relocate to Charlotte and find not just the number of people it needs but a uniquely talented group of people across a wide diverse set of skills, whether it's compliance, security, IT, commercial banking, risk management,” Gwaltney said. 

Wayflyer, an Irish fintech company specializing in financing for e-commerce businesses, announced in October 2025 it would be opening a new U.S. hub in Charlotte. Wayflyer Director of Credit Chloe Grennan said what Charlotte had to offer made the decision a no-brainer for the company.

“Charlotte came out clearly on top when we did a thorough market evaluation,” Grennan said in an email. “The combination of factors was hard to beat: a strategic East Coast location, a time zone that works well for our global operations, and a deep talent pool built around the city's history as a financial services hub.”

Investment has been helped by a state willing to provide incentives through the jobs development investment grants and other programs. The state doled out just over $98M across 21 deals through the job development grant program in 2024, according to Site Selection’s 2025 report on U.S. economic incentives.

Fintech companies first flocked to Charlotte during the young industry’s initial boom years following the Great Recession. The fintech ecosystem has since had staying power in the city throughout the ups and downs of the young industry. 

Digital services company SoFi Technologies announced last fall it would open a regional hub in Charlotte as part of a $3M capital investment, and Coinbase leased 59K SF in June for a customer service hub.

As the fintech wave in the city has matured, institutional banking and investment firms have deepened their roots there. Last month, Capital Group announced it would be opening a major East Coast operations hub in Charlotte with a $60M investment. Charles Schwab Corp. signed a lease for 59K SF in February, and Citigroup announced it would invest $16.1M to establish a major office facility in Charlotte. 

These investments are being supplemented by a national push among big banks to add new brick-and-mortar branches. JPMorgan Chase & Co., which already boasts more than 20 branches in Charlotte, is currently aiming to open five new locations this year as part of its plan to open some 500 new branch locations nationwide in 2026. Truist, Bank of America and Huntington Bank all announced plans to open branches in the Charlotte area as well. 

Alexandra Friedman, head of real estate at JPMorgan Chase, told Bisnow that financial organizations are choosing Charlotte because the city boasts “talent, a diverse economy, and an ecosystem that supports established firms and innovation.”

Many of the young, educated workforce in the metro area are graduates from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the state’s largest business school, said Tracy Dodson, chief operating officer and head of economic development of the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance. 

“Many graduates are staying in the Charlotte market, and that’s largely because of the partnership with our biggest employers, many of which are in financial services,” Dodson said. 

That influx of residents may soon pay off in the city’s multifamily market. 

Like other Sun Belt markets, Charlotte’s multifamily sector is working off a glut of overbuilding. Vacancies continued to inch up in Q4 2025 thanks to high deliveries, but the increase in vacancy has started to level off, according to Northmarq’s Q4 2025 multifamily report.

However, the metro region saw a net of 14,500 multifamily move-ins in 2025, breaking the previous year’s record of net move-ins by 15%, Northmarq reports. Supply growth is expected to taper off, vacancies will flatten, and rent is expected to grow a modest 0.5% in 2026, according to Northmarq. 

A Q1 Marcus & Millichap office report forecasts that the metro will add a total of 14,000 new jobs in 2026, including 3,500 traditionally office jobs. The Charlotte region ranked second in the country for total job growth last year, adding 37,600 jobs in 2025.

For a city with a thriving business sector, office vacancy remains high in Charlotte. That’s because developers raced to build new office space to meet corporate needs right before the pandemic hit, only to watch as the work-from-home movement during the pandemic left many of those spaces empty. 

But office vacancy peaked at 18% in 2023, according to Marcus & Millichap. Since then, it has gone steadily downward and is projected to shrink to just above 15% in 2026. According to Colliers, Charlotte’s average asking rent for office space in Q4 2025 was 2.1% higher year-over-year, thanks to a shrinking pipeline and rising development costs.

And many of the banks and fintechs entering Charlotte are bringing in employees from other markets, with retail and multifamily benefiting from this influx, said CBRE Executive Vice President John Christenbury. Marcus & Millichap ranked the city No. 1 in the nation in its 2026 retail forecast. 

“You’ve got more consumers that are going to live, go out to eat and shop in Charlotte now, so, ultimately, these added jobs benefit the rest of the economy, like residential and retail,” Christenbury said.

All this combines to create a kind of permanent momentum, at least in the near term, analysts say. Gwaltney said Charlotte should easily be able to maintain its status as a financial heavyweight moving forward, and this will continue to help the city’s CRE sectors.

“Where there's a healthy, thriving economy, that's where banks want to be. That's opportunity,” Gwaltney said.

Hirofumi Otsuka, CEO for SMBC Americas, said as much in his statement about his bank’s new investment in the city.  

“As SMBC continues to grow substantially in the United States, Charlotte is a standout location for us to invest in North Carolina for the long term in a major expansion that will establish our roots in the community,” he said.