Hi everybody. I'm Nicolola Tangian, the CEO of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and today I'm thrilled to have Brian Moyahan with us. Brian is the chairman and CEO of Bank of America, one of the world's largest financial institutions and we own 1 and a half% of this great company. Brian has led the bank for 15 years, steering it through the aftermath of the financial crisis and transformed it into a digital powerhouse. So Brian, wonderful to have you here. It's great to be here and uh thank you for your support to our company and uh look forward to a great session with you today.

>> Wonderful. Brian, you sit on the top of uh one of the world's largest banks. What's happening in the world? Well, I think there's a little bit of bifurcation between what's happening in you know various segments of the world but you can add it all up to the world but I think largely what's being driven now is the United States change in this policy towards uh from an economic basis leave aside a geopolitical basis but an economic basis a major change going on is that US has changed to uh with respect to four policies trade tariff type policies immigration policies this is more domestic in the US but uh the taxation budget policy um and then deregulation and you're seeing that play out in the US and obviously as the world's largest economy and the biggest trading partner with most countries you're seeing that impact around the world as we go through that uh change in in the set of policies with the new administ new Trump administration.

>> So when you um when you uh try to get a feel for where the world is moving what are the indicators you are looking at? So when you look around the world you look at a lot of indicators but again bring our our additional perspective on the US. We have a great research team which your firm and others benefit by. That's a major investment a half billion dollars a year annual investment in research and and they have the world growing a little bit less than 3% for the next uh for for this year. uh they have the world um in terms of slowing down a little bit uh based on all the discussions uh we could have about trade and tariff policy but when you look at the US what we look at is not only what that research team tells us which the US will grow at 1% fourth quarter of 25 versus 24 to give you a sense annualized you know what they give us that kind of projection no recession Fed's not going to cut rates then we look at our actual customer data and if you look at our customer data we have great insight in the American consumer or 70 million American households we do business with we have great insight as largest small business lender and middle market lender in the US and those basically are telling you uh interesting things that's we look at then as broader indicators I look at uh and we can go into what they're telling us but in broader indicators I also look in the US importantly about new claims for unemployment continuing claims for unemployment because frankly that's a leading indicator of what businesses are really doing versus what they're saying

>> have you any private kind of secret indicators that you are that you are particularly keen on that nobody else is really looking at? >> Well, if you look at the American consumer, the the uh discussion of public domain was as consumer confidence factors, you know, went down after a liberation day, April 2nd, and went back up all the back and forth. What we did saw was no break in no change in activity. So, how what are we talking about? the the Bank of America consumers, 70 million of them, will send out of their accounts about four and a half trillion dollars this year into the economy. Year to date, it's almost two trillion because we're almost halfway through the year. Um, if you look at that, it's up about 4 and a half to 5% of the first part of 25 versus the p first part of 24. If you look at the month of June, four four and a half%. When you look at that amount of money going the economy, that means the American consumer is participating heavily. When you look at their their balances and their accounts, stable to growing, bouncing around, not you know the core consumer kind of stable in the higherend consumer money went into the money market funds and other instruments are earning interest, but the amount of cash they have is actually at record highs. And so they're in pretty good shape. Unemployment's 4.2% or whatever. You know, the prospects for being unemployed are relatively low. So you put that aside and then you have to balance that against what consumers are saying they're feeling which is negative due to all the change and all the activity going on meaning what's that mean that means you know the tariff war that means immigration that means they're reading that the economy is slowing down and so what we see is US consumers doing pretty well we look at small mediumsize businesses

>> Brian are you surprised that the consumer is doing so well given given the insert day >> no not actually it it and it comes down to Nicola the the thing people miss is that the unemployment employment level is 4.1 in the US which is 100 basis points below full employment number one and number two wage growth is actually exceeding inflation in the aggregate across a period of time now it es and flows inflation came first and wage growth cut up to it and now they're running more in sync and then the remember the US consumer is a beneficiary of America's oil independence and you and that allows us to have a more balanced uh view when uh oil oil prices move around but as oil prices came down. That's a big benefit to the American consumer because that that just gives them more money to spend on something else. So, I'm not surprised by it. Uh consumer uh credit is very strong. I'm not surprised by it at all. I can understand why the people are surprised by it. And that's because they're reading survey data and that's what a consumer is on the couch. That's what they're telling you how they feel. It's I always say look at what they're doing, not what they say they're feeling.

>> Why are they doing things differently than what they feel? >> Because they have money and they're employed and and you know they're pretty good at spending in America. And so that doesn't mean that won't stop. It just means that you know earlier this year when everybody said American consumer was out of you know was was being broken by all this stuff a year and a half ago when American consumer was supposedly being broken by all this stuff. It never happened. They just kept spending and spending and spending. They were the stimulus payments that came through in 2021. People thought they were going to spend those down. They really didn't. The balancing accounts kept going. Uh uh basically came down a little bit and then started growing again. And so it all comes down to that, you know, the American economy is in okay shape. It's slowing down. And this is the trick. The trick will be balancing the impact of all this uncertainty around the business community, which gets hit by higher rates faster, especially small medium-sized businesses. And also is confused about what the rules of the game are that they need straightening out tax policy and uh you know, trade policy and and immigration for those in certain industries. They need those workers. And if that doesn't clear up, then I could see people starting to actually really adjust their cost basis and that would affect the American consumer because they'd be wor more worried about not having a job.

>> Are people with one political affiliation spending more than the people with the other political affiliation? I mean, are they feeling better about life? It >> we don't really see that's a little hard for us to tell in our our spending because we don't have that data for our people. But if you look at it more broadly in the surveys, you see that people who uh in the Michigan survey you can see in other surveys, you can see it's split by party affiliation in terms of their views of the future path of inflation, the future path the economy, but it averages all out because America's a 50/50 split by and large. It kind of average each other out. So people I think overplay that because they're trying to make a political point.

>> But I always say don't don't look at what people say they're going to do. Look at what they're actually going to do. Whether it's a person on credit, are they going to pay it? It's not whether they say they're going to pay, it's whe and a person on spending, it's not whether say they're going to spend or not, it's what they're doing. And I think the consumers adjusted their spending around, but it's pretty good. Now, if you go to small medium-sized businesses, this is where the Fed's rate structure really, really pinches and people are writing more about that, but it took a while for people to understand that because large companies go to the markets and are not affected. a flat rate curve allows them to go out the curve and actually secure longerterm funds. The problem is a a person who is running a a $50 million$100 million, $200 million revenue company, they're borrowing on lines of credit and that rate base rate went from, you know, 25 basis points to 50 basis points up to five and now down to fourish. That change is a huge change in the rate paid and that slowed the the businesses down in terms of making decisions and you can see it that they aren't using the lines of credit at the level they were pre-pandemic and sort of why not the economy is growing well enough you know the opportunity for demand uh fulfillment's out there and it's because they're worried they aren't buying the piece of equipment they're not making the change and that's what we site when we talk to the administration in the United States and say you really need to settle this in so that group of small mediumsize businesses will get more aggressive and as the Fed brings rate structure down they'll feel better.

>> Is it the uh the level of rates which is the main concern for for the business clients or is it other types of uncertainty you think? >> Well, if our survey of of small business customers over the last year has shown different elements. First it was rates and inflation because that was preoccupied but um and then it shifted back to workers. Why I say back to workers it was at that during the great resignation a couple years ago in United States and what they're saying is the inability to get enough employees that can do the jobs that they have that is being exacerbated uh by a lot of discussion you hear from them about the impact of inflation and if you're in construction and all its related parts you're a cement company you're a delivery company you're construction actually building the buildings the impact of the immigration policy is causing people not to show up if you're in the hotel and leisure farming, it's impacting you and and so I think in the broad-based employees, that's why you're hearing the administration saying we got to sort this out to make sure people know they're going to have the workers to be successful and and being agriculture and travel and entertainment and other types of industries because it's not that the activity is affecting a lot of them. It's the worry about the activity that's going to affect them that causes the workers not to come. So they went from being all about inflation, all about rates to wait, I can't get the workers again and can I get those workers. So everything everything's on their mind, but uncertainty about some of these topics is critical to them.

>> What about supply chain disruptions? Is that a is that a main topic for your clients? >> Yeah, it it is. I mean I I I fit that more in a tariff and look at the end of the day, we all learned something during co which is the the world's supply chains became extremely inefficient. The problem was they weren't extremely resilient. And so as these tariffs go on, people are seeing sort of I've got to be able to move my supply chain to places where uh maybe more favored as a trading partner to America if I'm bringing my goods into America. The real short-term thing is if I'm getting my goods from certain countries, you know, if I have the same good manufactured in a country with tariffs of 10 15% versus 30 40%. You know, and I'm going to supply to the same store to sell, guess what? who who's going to get sold the lower price unless I just eat the tariffs. So that that you know going back to liberation day that's what sent the shock to the system the market went way down the reaction to it as it became clear that they were going to get deals done and try to mitigate the overall size of the tariff that happened but the companies have two two things they're thinking about supply chain one is what is the tariff architecture trade architecture non-tariff barrier architecture and then secondly you know what is the plain facts about the ability to have a supply chain that if something happens in a narrow in a pl a very specific place it doesn't affect them

>> that that we learned in co you know surgical masks uh certain types of medical equipment certain types of formulararies leave aside the high-tech and ships and chips and everything this is just basic stuff you couldn't get it out of the country uh because of a particular area was going through a stress that's not resiliency and I think a lot of supply chain managers said whoa whoa whoa you're telling me I can't get this at any price and they're saying yes they're saying well fix that and that means you know the Vietnams and others Mexicos and others will benefit by the supply chain sort of spreading out.

>> Moving topic a bit, many banks are closing their branches. You are still seem to be a great believer in your branches. You got close to 4,000 of them. Um why why do you have a different view on branches than many other banks? >> Well, we believe in high touch high-tech and we follow the customer and the customer you shows us they like to do all the above, right? And so whether they like the phone channel, they like the branch channel, they like the uh mobile channel and online channel, they like all the different ways to interface the company. And if you look at uh what's happened over time, we've gone from 6,000 branches to 37 3,800 branches today. We've added branches in new cities. Well, we still have gone down. We've gone from 100,000 people working in our consumer business to about 60,000 today. That's a massive reduction due to the digitization, customer behavior change. But between the next today and tomorrow, you know, 24-h hour period, a half, million, 350,000 people will come down into our branches.

>> And who and who are these people? Are they mainly older people or >> it all everybody says it's a you would say it's older cohorts and stuff. It's just not true. It's it's a whole bunch of people. It's small it's entrepreneurs who want to open their accounts. It's people coming in from investment advice. Largely what's big transformation is a lot of the routine activity. The strategy of branches uh starting 30 years ago was to basically take variability out to make it you know a machine operation and make it very very processoriented and and so we did that that made them efficient say from 30 years ago to 20 years ago to then we said wait a second a lot of these transactions can actually be done by the customer themselves uh depositing a check um and you know that can be done through a mobile device it can be done through the ATM and suddenly We're able to move activity out. What that then left behind is what Nikolai is what really is important which is in those 60,000 people today. We have probably twice the relationship capacity we did back then because people tend to come in for more difficult issues. My mother died. I'm trying to figure out how to get the power of attorney so I can work with accounts. I need a mortgage loan. Uh I'm I'm just got my first bonus and I'm a younger person. I want to uh figure out how to invest it. And you know we have 2500 uh FAS we call them financial associates in the branches that will help them start with mail ledge. Uh the so the the complexity of the branches have changed to be much more relationship oriented. That's why the visit time is you know much more scheduleable and understandable as opposed to people coming in and doing routine transactions. That principle applies to all cohorts of age.

>> You know there's no no difference. If I if I'm my mother died and I'm 60 or my mother died and I'm 30, the issues I got to figure out how to handle her accounts, you know, so there there's not as much distinction on those types of issues.

>> Brian, you've been pretty vocal uh when it comes to regulation of banks. Um and we love people who are vocal about uh you know what they really believe in. So tell us what do you uh what is your take on bank regulations today? >> If you look at it today, the it's a classic case of the pendum swung past the point. um and you and also became sort of unreconcilable with each other. So if you go back to the financial crisis, DoddFrank in the United States, Basel 3 implementation on a global basis, all these things were meant to basically look at the core things that they thought were inadequate uh after the financial crisis. One of the core things that was inadequate that people forget about is a lot of companies that caused the stress and financial crisis were not in the banks in system were not regulated. First you brought the companies in then it was capital liquidity range of activities of those companies get them out of private equity and more principal activities and more into supporting clients like yourselves let you guys make the investments let the private equity firms make the investments don't compete against them so range of activities uh and then you and it went down the road the models and uh how to how to build models and things like that but what happened in that time frame especially in the United States is the the the way the rules kept changing is going back when we thought that the capital ratios in the banks of 7 8% would be adequate under the first after DoddFrank you know and that was still you know 25 30% increase probably from where people were to there and people said that would be enough we now went from 7 8%'s adequate to 10 11%'s adequate and the risk in the industry is actually quite frankly probably come down on a relative basis during that time

>> so if you look at all the regulations where where are the worst overregulations >> well first of all In 201 you know 181 19 the capital industry was sufficient and it's gone up by 25% and now they say it's sufficient. So I think what they have to do is get the capital rules set. They have to get Basel 3 implementing United States but on a fair basis because we use a different standard. Uh we got capital rules set. We got to get rid of some of the overlapping liquidity rules which you've seen with this supplemental leverage ratio change. And we've got to get clearer about our ability to engage in more modern commerce that's around you the cyber stable coins and things like that because it wasn't clear before. And then you got to let banks go out and this isn't appropriate for Bank America because we're not allowed. Let the mergers take place faster because there's 4,000 banks in United States and there'll be changes in that system and they got to not try to overregulate that change for purpose have nothing to do with the merger. So I think capital liquidity merger rules and then frankly the consumer regulation stuff just got much more penalty oriented much more fine oriented much more beyond what consumers want and got away from consumer choice that's already swung back too and there's high hopes this administration we get it back to balance

>> anything which is not regulated enough >> like private like um uh you know private credit uh alternative providers of credit and so on where where do you see that >> so the principle is getting lost a little bit Nikolai in the last chunk of time here is the their banking regulators being sort of the what their charter is across the world always only look at the banking system and then try to regulate the outside the banking system through the banking system as opposed to saying wait if you make loans or take deposits you're a bank whether you're a a stable coin uh provider or whether you're a private capital lender you know you have to be regulated a mortgage lender etc so the consumer bureau in the United States was meant to expand by activity, not by charter, as they call it. Activity, meaning I make a mortgage loan charter. I'm a bank versus non-bank. So, it went to do that. That was a good thing. Unfortunately, it got it bollocked up in different ways and and got away from it core charter. But that's a good thing. That's not happening in the commercial space. In other words, there's lots of entrance in the system who are not regulated in the same way as other entrance. And what that means is you start to get into um you know, regulatory arbitrage, so-called, right? if I can do this outside the system and that's where the banking system if you look in the United States where it's simpler to describe because of depth of capital markets half of every asset class being commercial loans consumer loans or more is outside our banking system and so you know and you're saying is that a good thing or bad thing you could say it's a good thing because it spreads a risk but it's not a good thing if the activity goes on in a different regulation so if we're allowed to do leverage of X for a company and that looks like good credit why can somebody just put it in a different place and do more leverage. They may be right, but then why can't we do it? You know, it's you shouldn't have regulatory uh leakage cause a problem. That that piece got lost in the banking regulation principles that DoddFrank put came in and around the world, you know, all these institutions came into the banking environment were regulated by the ECB, by the P, etc., etc. Now they're leaking back out and that's the question.

>> You are in many different countries. Um outside of the US, which countries are you the most excited about? Well, we continue to be excited about um what's going on in in the Middle East in terms of inward development. Now, in in the days where people went and said, "Give it, you're making money, give us your money to go manage, you know, it's a different world and different possibilities for banking." We've been in, you know, Dubai for 60 years. So, it's not like a new new thing to us. But, you know, what's going on in Saudi Arabia, what's going on in the UAE and and helping those companies grow and prosper. That's kind of very interesting. Asia will always be interesting. It es and flows where it's interesting. We have a great franchise in in Australia which continues to grow. We we got a good business in Japan which has a new found of uh shareholder discipline and stuff which ought to be good for investment banking capabilities. And then you know and then Europe we we believe that we have lots of market share to gain. It's not Europe grows at 1% but we think with our products and services our capabilities whether it's in the corporate investment banking space or in the market space we just have a lot of room to grow in the UK and Europe I put together in that case in all of European sort of broader set of countries and so we feel there's growth opportunities everywhere and in fact our international business you know just to give you a sense of how big it's how much our company's changed because our name is Bank of America everybody thinks of America our international business we went from approximately uh 20 billion outstanding loans 15 years ago about 130 150 billion today. So it's grown dramatically and it's keyed us to take those multinational clients across the world and help them navigate all the economies. India is another good country. We've been there 60 plus years. You know we've been on these countries a long time and we keep investing and they're all good opportunities especially when you have a world that's very disagated market share like it is in banking. M you reminded us uh that your name is Bank of America and of course this is a bit of a sensitive question but you know uh in some parts of the world the view of America has changed a bit lately. Do you think uh is Bank of America a good name to have?

>> It it is it's it stands it's a a great brand and we we do a lot of research on it. Um and so the great positives it comes with u obviously in a world where people want to take a position about America say about America you're bank of America uh people confuse us with the Fed we're not the Fed because in certain countries the bank of X is the central bank we're not the central bank and so you get some interesting fun uh uh happenings around that where people write the letter to me acting like I'm setting interest rates or something which I'm not. Um but you know it's it's a great franchise, a great brand and we have Merill for the uh consu the financial advisory business in the US because it's distinctive but outside the US we basically operate as Bank of America except where it's not legal to do that because we do a securities business and then we operate Bank America Maril Lynch or some other configuration but it's a great brand and you know we take its pluses and minuses and you know at the end of the day you know we've been around this country uh since uh George Washington was president in the oldest parts of our bank. So it's been a good ride.

>> Moving on to technology. How will AI transform the bank? >> It's already started. Um so it's going to transform the bank around a couple dimensions are different and it's just started in earnest. Um first it enables you to have replace uh human interaction with to human interaction. Second, it replaces your it helps you analyze what we call text to text. In other words, big amounts of information. How do you pull them together and have them come out the other side so somebody then can take that and utilize it differently? It also can help you with testing and and and checking things. We file, you know, literally millions and millions of reports a day and it helps you not only prepare those, but more importantly to test those to make sure they're accurate and and and helps you find out ways to improve them. So, you know, if you back and it helps us in computer coding, we're already using it. 18,000 plus programmers already use it and and and stuff. So let me let me give a very concrete straightforward example. So this product this technique we call Erica. So Erica is the way a consumer can have a virtual assistant at Bank of America. You're hearing a lot about agent agent bots and all that stuff. We've had this now for 5, seven, eight years. We started about 10 12 years ago and what we had them develop is we looked at the search technology and it just wasn't going to work in financial services. So we had them develop a new natural language processing predictive model which today we call a small lang you know small language model. Back then nobody would have called it that because it was a different world. We had them build that for us and then we used it and trained on our own data and it can answer questions and now 20 million Bank America customers use Erica each quarter about 200 million times to ask questions that it can answer. Now, Erica has a lot of room to go in refinements and improvements and and doing it, but we know it works. And those 200 million interactions would have been a phone call, a tech, a text or an email or walking into a branch. So, 200 million times a quarter we're moving. We're heavy digitalized already. We have 50 billion consumer interactions a year. So, it's massive amount of activity. It's heavy digitalized, but the room to go to digitalize it more with AI is different with with the machine learning and and other types of models we had. And Erica shows us that bridge

>> and when you benchmark your usage of AI and technology against other banks, what do you see? >> You know, I I this is where you get into the question of what people say they're doing, what we're doing. We we see Erica out there working. We don't see any product that's actually see we see the in certain products are just emerging that can do that. um we've seen what we've done in coding and other other people are talking about it. We have 18,000 people literally doing this today. So we we feel we are a company of applied technology in just massive uh massive amounts. So we spend about four and a half billion dollars a year on technology initiatives we call it which is new new code and new work. Um we apply that relentlessly. We're one of the largest patent holders for all kinds of technology, including AI a technology applications in the US. And so our view is we're we're state-of-the-art and beyond. But what we aren't doing is announcing things which don't stick to the ribs. We're very much a company that says we'll tell people after it's already operating and drive it through the system. And so that so with coding, a lot of people talked about I'm you know doing this. What we say is let's get people going. And we're saving about there's 21 steps in a project to go from business initiation to endpoint. Five or six of them are capable of being enhanced by artificial intelligence. We're using it 18,000 people. We're saving about 30% of those five steps which gets us about 10% overall, you know, and so we're much more applied uh driver of it and nobody has anything like Erica and size and scale. Nobody has the automated underwriting we do, you know, things like that. But the real question is how do you keep driving this to new places? And so our teammates in investment bank are preparing pitch books. We just started implemented that. They all still have people in front of them to make sure they're right and how they work, but it gives them a leg up. And so we're applying this uh daily uh uh uh uh uh customer interactions in the markets business are all driven by artificial intelligence off the base of our research. Not grabbing stuff from all over everywhere and throwing together and making mistakes. It takes our research and organiz and delivers it out in a more comprehensive fashion to our clients and so the maestro every day shoots that out to everybody. So we believe in applying this technology.

>> So when you have um deployed uh all your user cases and all everybody else have deployed all their user cases and you have you know the humanoid helping us on the on the blue collar side. What what is society going to look like 10 15 years from now? This is this is one of the great questions out there but but you can talk from experience. So our company uh you this is my 16th year having the honor of running the place and we've driven a lot of change. It went in 2010 we had 285,000 people. Today we have 212,000 people. So that's all the c the numbers of customers are larger. The numbers of interactions are through the roof. The numbers of you size of the loan book is is is bigger. Their size of deposit book is you almost threefold bigger. You numbers of consumer transactions blah blah blah blah blah trading transactions, quotes, everything. Hugely bigger company but you know 30% less people. That was all by applying technology. What this gives you is a chance to go to places you couldn't go before. And so what we did is we took the company and took you know compensation levels AI susceptibility you know the one axis compensation levels the other axis AI susceptibility and then dots for how big the um the the numbers of people doing those activities are and what you're looking for is dots that are susceptible that are highly paid that are big volumes of people and that's what you're trying to go after. So that's different than the automation we went through 15 years ago. it was more uh processing teammates and things like that. We only have 25,000 processing teammates in the company maybe 30,000 out of the 200 some thousand. So as the work has already shifted this allows you to go to different places to our our risk teammates, our finance teammates, our HR teammates, the HR team uses uh uh some techniques in terms of resumes and things like that. That's the difference here. And so what's the societal impact of that? I'll give you glass half full half empty. Um in 1969 America employed 80,000 80 million people worked in America. In 1960s the advent of of computers the advent of technology the idea that all the jobs were going to go to Japan Inc. at that point it was before China emerged the idea that you know the US was going to be more abundant employment. Today we have 160 million people working and so something happened as all that technology I think from the late 60s now came on stream that we are able to employ twice as many people in this country and so I think simply put the world has a way of working in the way around us this goes to different places I can understand why people are a little concerned but on the other hand you know at a firm like yours which is a brain power firm and that's what you do it'll help people be more effective it'll make and over time you may be able to trim your aggregate headcount but It doesn't mean you're gonna It's going to be a long time and maybe, you know, someday people can fantasize about it before we have no people left.

>> Brian, you became CEO in 2010 after the financial crisis. What's the toughest decision you made during your tenure in the bank? >> Well, the toughest decisions all ran around how how we got through the aftermath of financial crisis and how we had to be so resolute on resolving issues. So we had a quarter where you we settled lawsuits, the $20 billion lawsuit, etc. You know, those were tough decisions. It wasn't necessarily the financial decision that was tough enough, but it was the people implications of deciding to take a completely different position in the mortgage business. Um, and you from company was doing one in five mortgages, we had to go down to where we got to 5% share because we what we were doing was not directly with consumers. Those were hard decisions because they affected people's lives and our ability and and had to retrain our whole brain power in the company. Um that was a tough all the decisions that are toughest are about people you know and disrupting other people's lives. So downsizing people, changing people and that's why we frankly have worked very hard to do headcount management to avoid layoffs and we've been pretty good at it for the last 1015 years. In the early days, we had to do some layoffs. And to me, that's the toughest decision because you're basically walking into somebody who was a great worker, worked the you work for the company, and say, you know what, we just can't use you anymore. And that's going to our AI conversations why we're managing headcount so carefully and trying to figure out how to make sure that we aren't overstaffing and then having to take people out.

>> Do you tell anybody yourself or you is that delegated to other people? >> Oh, I I had to, you know, I never start a process like this unless I'm willing to change the people work for me, you know. So actually it ironically it in the first downsizing we did out as a financial crisis I lost my job and and it was before I CEO I I was running integration and I decided that the pos one of the positions they had to eliminate was mine and and I was almost out of the company and they offered me a different job and I stayed. So I believe resolutely that you have to start from the top. This is not a bottoms up thing and I think it I also believe resolutely that management has to be careful on staffing to ensure that they don't disrupt the broad base of employees and that this is coming from a guy for 25 30 years who spent his life doing M&A merger integration you know the relentless take out of cost as you went to organic growth company you have to be much more careful because there when you're doing a merger company A company B people know that there's going to be changes

>> when you're organic growth company like we are now people don't anticipate there's going to be those kinds of changes so you have to manage in performance management etc so yes I had to tell myself and uh and I would expect not at all my direct reports cascade through you know how to at those times how to take uh take action I we basically run the company so we don't have to do that again

>> you mentioned you mentioned M&A and many other banks have kind of pivoted into wealth management fintech acquired things now. Uh, Bank of America has maintained a a a very steady course. Um, why is that? >> Well, there there's there's one I don't want to go to jail because it's illegal to acquire banks in the US if you're above 10% of deposit. Not it's not criminally uh responsible. But, you know, it's just against the law honestly. And so, we cannot acquire another bank with deposit unless that bank fails. And

>> lots of other stuff. Lots of other stuff you can buy, right? you know, wealth management, whatever.

>> Then when you go to wealth management, other stuff, a lot of it has deposits in it, you know, and so and so we've been careful about that. But let me step back. In the end of the day, we have such an organic growth capability in this company. So our highest market shares are in the low, you know, 10, 13, 14%. We got a lot of room to grow and we have the brand capability, uh, the the teammate capability, the, you know, the product capability, you can just drive the organic growth. So when people say we got out of the asset management business because we thought it was inconsistent with being the biggest distribution house. We have $4.5 trillion dollars in wealth management assets, you know, we take great companies and manage money and and get them into our investors. We didn't need to make the product honestly. And so we got out of we sold that. But that doesn't mean we don't have a huge stake in wealth management. You know, it's one of the biggest in the in the business. So that happens. So we we're always trying to think through how do we our basic principle is we have eight customer se uh businesses we go after the customers directly we don't do indirect business so we try to really focus on that and that led us to saying our best thing was to be giving financial advice to the customer whether it's automatedly through me edge or personally through uh the private bank or mel rather than you know basically it's a wholesaling uh uh asset management product. So as we look forward we bought uh we bought companies and payments you know and payment technology. So we bought companies in medical payments in other areas and we will continue to do that to add products and capabilities in the payments area that that's and we've also formed companies. So Zel which was had a predecessor was formed by the industry. We formed countries companies to help drive that we'll continue to do that. So you know our our view is we're organic growth company and we got to be focused here and then if we see a market opportunity like in the 401k business we invested you know 100 million our business and drove it because with a you know 6570 billion expense base an incremental 10020 million rather than doing an acquisition if you could even find a company and figure out how to reconfigure it you could just drive it and drive it through the sales force. So we we've learned a lesson about how fast we can drive things in the world will spend the money to support. How would you how would you describe the corporate culture in the mech the corporate culture? Look, I think it's uh it's it's embedded in the the phrase the question we asked. What would you like the power to do? Our culture is to help serve our clients to help them achieve their financial goals u and do that and serve all our constituenties, our clients, our customers help them meet their goals. Our teammates help each other meet their goals. our shareholders, help them meet their goals and our communities because the end day we have to make sure our communities are are are strong and resilient because that that's the core base of the economy of which we make our money.

>> Do you think a bank is a bank? I I mean is do you think the corporate culture in your bank is very different from other banks or or or is a banker a banker? I I I think they're the products and services are more commodity. The way you deliver them is not. And so delivering on a customer focused basis make you know direct to the customer not having those you know places that are indirectly customer businesses etc. You know that is different but and in our products our brand and our capabilities our talent are the the fact we're global the fact we're nationwide those are all very unique things. there's only a couple of us can do what we do on a global basis for corporates and and investors around the world. There's only you know a handful of companies. So those are very unique. Um but you just said a checking account is a checking account but how you deliver that checking account for on a customer focused integrated rewards basis th that takes a philosophical difference and then how do you position yourself as and our client our customers our teammates how they desire to help the customers put our brand at the best just keeps going up and up and up in terms of satisfaction in all our businesses that that's a unique that focus I think is unique. Okay. So, now we're coming into one of your 3,700 branches. Okay. Yeah.

>> I'm 52 years old, got a checking account. Uh, you know, how how can I feel that Bank of America is different from other banks? >> Well, I'll tell you a story. I I was sitting next to somebody uh that I didn't know and they turned to me they and they said, you know, we went in with three generations in my family. my father, me, and and my son, and we all had business, and the people did such a great job. Her father, who had been a a leader in the military, said they run a pretty good unit on the way out the door, you know, which meaning the execution was strong. So, but all the all the customers felt that way. She said, "They took great care of my father. They took great care of me. My son was excited to open his first bank account." That's what we want to instill is that at the point of attack that happens over and over and over again. And by the way, my email is in the public domain. If customer doesn't get that experience, they don't they're not feelful, right? Let me know. And so I don't, you know, they can they can send an email directly to me and to our other teammates at the top of the house. So we hear about, you know, anything goes bump in a night and we try to figure out why and re-engineer it. That's the process side of running this huge enterprise. You leave nothing to chance. But the feeling side you want is that customer came just unsolicited tell me to your point. I walked in your branch and I got this experience and that customer didn't know me. Other customers who know me will tell it but that customer I'd never met in my life until I sat next to them at a thing that was unrelated to bank.

>> What do you think is the key to building a high performance culture? >> Look at the end of the day you got to get great people. You got to coach them and and the number one thing is they got to believe the company is in it for them.

>> So they continue to seek development. They continue to seek uh advice. They continue to learn. They feel that the culture not only will help them do the day-to-day, you know, save, protect their family, uh keep their family healthy, that stuff. They really want to know this company's going to help me do something here I can't otherwise do. And so in areas where we're recruiting against the, you know, the biggest best firms in the world that you can describe in technology or cyber security, the people come here because they know they can do special things, but they also know that we're going to do it the right way. And I think that's that's the key to getting that talent. You got to get that talent and but you got to make sure that talent thrives. And so we take an employee survey and we just got back the results and it's up a you continues to increase and up a couple points since last year.

>> But 180,000 people fill out that survey >> and so it's not and we asked them what do they think about the company and 48 questions. I've been doing it for 30 years. We can look at the nuances. But you want them to say, I believe my manager is going to make me better and I believe I can do anything I can do with this company and I can seize on that opportunity. That's what gets that culture going that you want because that then means the best and brightest will come stay and prosper.

>> Where do where do you personally seek advice? >> I look I get my advice from doing what I suggest. I I read a lot from a lot of sources uh a lot of sources that I might may or may not agree with. And then I have, you know, I always am watching what other companies do and what other CEOs do and what other CEOs in the past have done. And it's not like I go to X and say, "What do you think?" It's more you you get a paniply of X's and say, you know, how do you think about how they thought through these questions? So I've had the luck of having great mentors along the way. But every time I sit in a session, I'm always trying to figure out how you know some of my peers analyze a problem that I may have not have thought to what they're thinking about or other companies what they're thinking about or listen to clients. And so it's just you got to be a learning machine and and that's the the trick about being a CEO is or anybody in our society today is the information is curated to you and you have to avoid curation. You have to seek beyond that. You have to try to find out different things. And then in an industry where you're the leading company, you one of the leading companies, you have also have to look outside our industry a lot to what is important. So when we think about our brand, you know, yes, in financial services, etc. But what are the best brands that ever existed and why and what when did uh great brands make mistakes, you know, that's where you think about, you know, Jim Collins and the great business writers and mighty fall and all these different things. You're always trying to figure out from all that, you know, sort of

>> what are the best brands which ever existed. >> Oh, we look at them all. All the big consumer brands, all the big institutional brands, people have grown market share organically across periods of time. Uh, and we're studying them. And I I won't name them because that's not fair to them or to the ones I wouldn't name, but you you'd have your usual suspects. But, you know, we're you're always in different business. So, you can't just say they did this, we do that. You have to sit there and say what were the principles by which they did this. What are the biggest reasons for failure that you are trying to avoid?

>> I I think you a complacency u b you get stuck in bureaucracy and progress a large company. How do you break through that? C you you don't get ahead or get ahead of a trend. And this is where AI is kind of interesting is you got to we got to utilize this and drive it. But if you get too far ahead, you can bet the company in a way that may not work. And so that's you know and those are the source of failure. people get too far ahead of a trend or don't keep up with a trend and or don't keep the brand fresh or don't think think they're doing well when they're not doing well and are willing to poke at and ask questions. So while a CEO would you know always has to be optimistic you know in the heat of the night you have to be very sort of what am I what are we doing wrong what could we do better all the time but you have to make sure you translate that into action into process so it gets done and that's that's tricky yes

>> how do you remain a learning machine >> you just you get up early in the morning and I just absorb you know just start reading you know multiple papers multiple news sources uh multiple research papers um and you're just listening out there, you know, you're always listening and and trying to learn. And and by the way, you know, we talk about young kids today. You know, one of the fears I have is the curation of of uh of the way they get fed. The way we all get fed, I shouldn't say it's young people, it's everybody. The way we all get fed through news feeds and the algorithm and stuff narrows your scope as opposed to improve your scope. But I there's a there's a book written by a fellow named Brian Graas, who's a great movie producer, writer, etc. called it a curious mind. I always recommend that to the young kids because I say it talks about his career. It's a fun story. He's a wonderful human being and done wonderful things. But he did it a lot by just asking questions and learning a lot. And you know, I always say to people that's the way way to pattern your life. I ran into that book, you know, 10 years ago or so. But you know, but you look at that story and that I suggest your listeners read that book. It's 275 pages. But it just keeps reminding you that if you keep trying to learn, you'll be a powerful engine. Um, and but if you stop learning, you get created. That's that's the problem. So I I get information from lots of sources. But the key is how do you keep making sure that aperture stays open, doesn't get closed because every time you look at X, Y, and Z, it starts to shove into that corner under the modern meth techniques uh for information delivery.

>> Well, I think that's a great place to end because normally, guess what? We end with uh you know advice to young people and you you already given it seems like you have to read that book to uh remain a learning machine like you have and uh it's for sure very impressive what you have achieved. So big thanks for being with us today. >> Thank you and thank you for all all you do and hopefully you enjoyed it and uh look forward to talking to you again. >> Absolutely. Thank you.