Bank of America 2011 Annual Report Download - page 5

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“ How do customers
feel about the basics:
Is Bank of America
providing high-quality
and efficient service
to customers?”
to do on these exposures and other mortgage-related matters,
we ended 2011 with almost $16 billion in reserves to handle
the costs of mortgage-related representations and warranties
claims. Resolving these and other claims will take time, but we
are moving through these issues aggressively and resolving
them in the best interest of our shareholders — settling when
appropriate, and contesting them when we believe that is the
right course. There is considerable disclosure on our mortgage
exposure in the Financial Review section of this report, and I
encourage all shareholders to review this section.
Having made so much progress on the two urgent
challenges of balance sheet strength and mortgage issues,
our company is now better positioned to deliver on all our
operating principles as we move forward in 2012.
Being customer-focused
Being customer-focused, in the broadest sense, simply
means being responsive to the needs of customers and
clients — providing the products and services they want,
when, how and where they want them.
To do this more effectively, we conducted an important
reorganization of our company in 2011 when we named
two executives to newly created roles as co-chief operating
officers. The intent of this reorganization was to better align
our operating units to serve our three groups of customers.
David Darnell, a 33-year veteran of the company who has led
many of our businesses during his tenure, is responsible for
those businesses that serve retail customers, wealthy clients
and small businesses in the U.S. Tom Montag, who has led
global wholesale financial businesses for more than 25 years,
is responsible for all of our businesses that serve medium-
sized to large companies and institutional investors worldwide.
Retail customers put a premium on convenience, clarity,
choice and value. Over the past two years, we have overhauled
the design of our products and services to emphasize these
attributes. Our customers have responded: Average deposit
balances across our retail businesses grew by $20 billion in
2011 to nearly $663 billion, and we continued to see growth
in consumer spending in our credit and debit card businesses.
“ Customers and clients consistently tell us they
appreciate the one-on-one service they get in our
5,700 retail banking centers from their financial
advisors and commercial, corporate and investment
bankers. Our investor clients consistently rank the
research they get from our research platform at or
near the best in the world. Customers also appreciate
the many ways they can reach us, including ATMs,
mobile applications and online. In areas where
the service is less consistently satisfactory, we are
investing and improving. Often this is the result of
disparate technology platforms, service centers that
have not yet been consolidated and rationalized after
mergers, or, in the case of home loans modifications
and other challenges, the sheer spike in volume
following the mortgage crisis. These are the areas
we are focusing on in 2012 to bring service quality
across the organization up to the highest level.”
Supporting Customers and Clients
Bank of America continued to support the economic recovery in 2011 by
extending $557 billion in credit to U.S. consumers, small and medium-
sized businesses and large corporate clients, and raising approximately
$644 billion in capital on behalf of its global clients.
The credit we extended and the capital we raised helped our customers
and clients meet their goals, such as buying a new home, paying for
college, adding another assembly line or expanding into new markets.