How to Build a Bank
Bank Architecture, Site Selection, and Branch Design
Starting a bank construction project is a process we’ve guided thousands of financial institutions through. Whether launching a new bank or expanding an existing one, success starts with the right strategy and the right bank branch location. As a financial architecture firm with deep experience in bank architecture and site selection, we help banks make informed decisions that set projects up for long-term performance.
Our clients aren’t expected to know everything about bank design, technology, or industry trends. That’s our role. Through EvoBank®, our evolving-bank process, we bring insight that goes beyond architecture, incorporating operational strategy, emerging technology, and the changing role of banks within their communities.
Start With Strategy: inVision®
Before design begins, we lead clients through inVision®, Programming, and Feasibility Studies to define a clear path forward. This phase uncovers the full picture of your bank design project, aligning goals, budget, schedule, and operational needs.
Site selection is critical. Using a proven 9-point site selection model, we evaluate visibility, access, market presence, and long-term viability to identify the strongest locations for bank branches and financial institutions. The inVision process concludes with a defined project scope, conceptual design, schedule, and budget, giving clients confidence before moving into full architectural services.
Co-Branding
We specialize in co-branded bank environments that integrate complementary businesses into financial spaces, increasing foot traffic, visibility, and community engagement. Co-branding is a growing trend in modern bank design and an effective way to attract non-customers into the branch.
Bank Design
Bank Design Makes a Difference
Our approach to bank design goes beyond what the space needs to do and delves into how the space can be best utilized. We do this in terms of the bank’s convenience for their customers and the role the bank can serve within its community. By designing a bank with customer convenience in mind, we can shift the experience from one of necessity to one of relationship-based.
Efficiency, Convenience, and Functionality
We design warm, welcoming bank environments while applying financial services planning expertise to improve operational efficiency and reduce long-term cost. Through new construction, renovations, or tenant improvements, we can optimize workflows and right-size staffing, helping institutions meet client needs with fewer full-time roles over time. That can mean avoiding a backfill after a retirement or reducing projected hires, creating meaningful lifecycle savings across the branch network.
We Do It All.
Our bank interior design services deliver a complete, brand-forward package, from durable materials and finishes to coordinated furniture, fixtures, artwork, and merchandising displays, plus long-lasting carpet and tile selection. Your branch interior is a direct expression of your bank brand and culture, shaping first impressions, improving the customer experience, and supporting employee attraction and retention.
Making Bank Interior Design Work
Blending the interior design within a bank’s floorplan is essential. Whether a project is new construction, remodeling or a tenant improvement, we know during the design phases to account for essential interior design elements that will eventually fill the space. Part of what we look for when we’re listening to our clients and asking about their vision for their bank is to uncover elements of their brand and culture that can be built into the image of their space.
Explore PocketBank
Expanding to new communities remains a key objective of today's financial institutions. The challenge is doing so efficiently. Conventional wisdom surrounding brick and mortar expansion is that it is costly and time-consuming, but if new construction could be achieved effectively and efficiently, financial institutions could deliver products and services to new communities at minimal expense. PocketBank is HTG's compact approach to financial design that leverages the latest technologies and project delivery methods to make branch network expansion more achievable and cost-effective than ever. Brick and mortar facilities are the most impactful way for financials to branch into communities, build new relationships, and demonstrate commitment and stability. PocketBank provides a cost effective solution for doing just that.
Bank Architecture
Our Area of Expertise
We have thousands of financial institutions in our portfolio, and while banking might look different today than it did even five or ten years ago, the value of banks and the role they play within communities is as strong as ever.
inVision, Programming and Feasibility Studies were specifically created for our community banks. It was a way for them to establish the Scope of the Project before committing to full architectural and engineering services.
Through inVision, Programming and Feasibility Study, we focus on listening to our clients and uncovering how we can best help them. You see, there’s no single answer for what the right approach to bank architecture is, but once we hear our clients and combine what they bring to the table with what we bring to the table, the results tend to speak for themselves.
Working Hand in Hand
Once all of the Research and Planning, Programming and Feasibility Study and Architecture and Engineering drawings are complete, the project can go out for bidding and permitting. By using our project management services, we will help our clients select a local General Contractor. We work hand in hand with our client, the contractors and vendors responsible for all elements of bank construction.
New or Remodel?
Whether your project is new construction, a remodel of an existing space or a tenant improvement, we will work with you throughout every step. We will not only design a space or a building, we will also coordinate the furniture, signage, banking equipment, city processes, contractors, etc. This allows you to continue spending your time running your bank while we take care of the project needs.
Our goal is always to serve the client and listen to them, and we stay right by their side, handling the various needs that can arise throughout the project and ensuring the design we put together is executed.
There are unique differentiators within your brand, your story, your community, and your vision. Those differentiators, combined with our experience and expertise, can create partnerships beyond buildings.