PNC employees must return to the office five days a week starting May 4, according to a memo sent to employees Wednesday.
“Five years ago, we made a necessary shift in how we work — moving away from our in-office model to prioritize your health and safety during an unprecedented time,” CEO Bill Demchak wrote in a memo seen by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and confirmed by a spokesperson.
“Today, our world has changed, and so has PNC,” Demchak said. “As we look ahead, it’s time to return to the way we work best: together, in person.”
Whispers of a five-day RTO among employees surfaced last month, according to the Post-Gazette.
During a Dec. 3 fireside chat, Demchak suggested that working from home benefits employees but “harm[s] the company,” the outlet reported. But bank management, at the time, said concerns about full-time RTO were mere speculation, according to the Post-Gazette.
PNC’s policy change closely follows one at competitor Truist, which ended hybrid work Jan. 1 after announcing such plans in November.
PNC and other banks have gradually required employees to come back to the office for a greater share of the workweek since the COVID-19 pandemic sent everyone home in 2020. In the intervening years, banks such as JPMorgan Chase have ordered employees’ back to a normal five days in the office.
“PNC has always been an in-office company,” Demchak wrote in the memo. “It’s not just how we operate — it’s part of our culture. We are a relationship-driven organization, and our strength lies in the connection we build with each other, our clients and our communities.”
Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom, who has studied work-from-home policies, published research in 2024 that found hybrid schedules to be a “win-win for employee productivity, performance and retention.”
A hybrid model gets a bad reputation, Bloom said, because it’s often conflated with fully remote work, which can pose issues “when it’s not managed well.”
In his memo, Demchak noted that “[b]eing in the office fuels collaboration and sparks innovation, and helps us grow — individually and collectively.”
He’s not alone in his preference. JPMorgan’s operating committee in January 2025 called an in-office mandate “the best way to run the company.”
A JPMorgan spokesperson told Banking Dive on Thursday that “[e]arnings, market share and customer service rankings have been growing alongside the increase in back-to-office,” but noted that he did not have data regarding correlations available.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who as early as February 2021 called remote work an “aberration,” has required his employees’ office presence since 2023. Despite the stricter policy compared to its peers, Goldman hasn’t suffered a loss in its employee pipeline: a record 360,000 people applied for the Goldman Sachs internship program last year, and less than 1% were accepted, Fortune reported.
Roughly half of Goldman’s 2025 internship class told the bank that their preferred way to collaborate was in person, versus 35% over instant messages, 11% over email, 5% over video conference and 2% over phone calls, survey results showed. They see in-person work as primarily important for receiving coaching, forming spontaneous connections and brainstorming ideas, according to a survey.
On the other hand, banks including Citi, BNY and U.S. Bank continue to allow employees one to two days per week of remote work.
“We believe [a hybrid model] offers the best of both worlds – flexibility to have better work-life integration while realizing the many advantages of being together in person,” according to Citi’s website.
