Bank of America CEO: Room To ‘Double’ Its US Retail Segment

Brian Moynihan, Chief Executive with Bank of America, is not concerned with overwhelming his industry sector — instead, he believes the banking giant can double its consumer market share.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Moynihan was candid: “Our market share in consumer is probably 12, 13, 14 percent, depending on who counts . . . The reality is, you could double that. Other companies that you think might have big consumer markets share — the auto companies, the soft drink companies, the beer companies — they have massively more consumer share [than BofA],” he said.

The United States has thousands of consumer banks, but, over a decade out from the Great Recession and financial crisis of 2008, already-dominant players like Bank of America have only grown. Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, after a 2019 merger between BB&T and SunTrust, expressed his concerns that deregulation had “amplified the potential for the biggest banks to threaten our financial system. Further consolidation by large banks would make matters even worse.”

Moynihan believes doubling Bank of America’s retail business could happen without opening more branches.

“If we do a good job for the customers and clients and we’re fair in our pricing, I think that’s good because . . . the scale that we have enables us to do more for the customers,” Moynihan said.

As the bank sees growth in online products and services, and as deposits increase beyond industry averages — by almost $50bn in 2019 alone — Moynihan is not planning to expand overseas to achieve retail growth, citing Bank of America’s wealth management division’s recent departure from international markets due to an inability to achieve profitability. And he believes foreign diversification won’t buttress the bank during future economic challenges.

“There isn’t going to be enough to offset a U.S. recession in what we could do outside the United States because . . . [the] U.S. is so big,” Moynihan said.