Bank of America is competing for talent while trying to keep its expenses in check, and it plans to add more investment bankers, according to news reports.
The firm plans to invest in its staff while also keeping expenses “as tight as we can,” said CFO Alastair Borthwick at the bank’s financial CEO conference Tuesday, according to Bloomberg.
On the latter front, BofA is relying on technology, investing in digital products and steering its clients to handle tasks such as depositing checks digitally instead of through a branch teller, Bloomberg writes.
“Every time that we do something electronic and the client takes a photo of a deposit check and does that rather than come into a branch, that’s saving us money,” Borthwick said.
The company is also set on expanding its investment banking footprint, with plans to add to the unit’s staff, according to the news service.
“We feel like we can do an even better job by adding more investment bankers,” said Matthew Koder, who heads the unit, according to Bloomberg.
Bank of America has taken a different tack than some of its competitors, such as Goldman Sachs, which signaled this summer that it may need to cut staff.
In July, BofA CEO Brian Moynihan told Bloomberg that the company had no intention of steering away from its hiring plans despite the current economic environment. In the second quarter, BofA hired more than 1,600 workers.
As for its wealth management business, BofA has seen the number of wealth advisors – which includes those at Merrill Lynch, BofA Private Bank and consumer banking – fall to 18,449 by the end of June, down from 19,385 at the end of June 2021.
But it has plans to grow those ranks in strategic geographic locations.
In April, Andy Sieg, president of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, told the Houston Business Journal that the wirehouse plans to double the number of advisors it has in Houston, to 500, over the next decade.
Merrill also plans to grow its advisor force in Dallas by 25% this year, adding 30 more advisors.
