On Thursday, November 7th, Bank of America will bring back its ‘More Rewards Day’ promotion. This is a one-day celebration giving Bank of America consumer and small business cardholders the opportunity to earn bonus rewards for all the purchases they make with a Bank of America credit card on that day only.
On More Rewards Day, all Bank of America consumer and small business credit cardholders will automatically earn an additional two percent cash back, two points per $1, or two miles per $1 spent. The bonus rewards are automatically applied to the cardmember’s account.
The additional rewards will apply to the first $2,500 of Purchase transactions, up to a maximum of $50 in cash rewards, 5,000 points, or 5,000 Miles per unique Consumer credit card account. That means that if you have more than one Bank of America card, you can earn up to 10,000 miles two cards, 15,000 with three cards and so on.
The promotional offer is in effect 12:00am to 11:59pm Eastern Time (ET) on November 7, 2024. Only purchases that post to your account and appear on your statement with a transaction date of November 7, 2024 ET will qualify. So you should be careful with online purchases, as sometimes they will not post until an item ships.
This promotion is especially valuable for those Preferred Rewards members who also get up to 75% more in rewards for all their purchases. The top bonus rate is for Platinum Honors, Diamond or Diamond Honors tiers. Bank of America Preferred Rewards members will earn their Preferred Rewards bonus on their purchase amounts, but not on the incremental bonus earn for this promotion.
So let’s take the Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards credit card for example, which earns 3% cash back on the top spending category. With the 75% Preferred Rewards bonus, you normally earn 5.25% cash back on one eligible category. And on November 7th, you will get an additional 2% cash back. That means that your top spending category will earn you 7.25% cash back on up to $2,500 in spending.
Tens of thousands of Bank of America clients reported outages of online and mobile banking services today. At 1 p.m. ET, more than 20,000 clients had reported issues with the $3.2 trillion bank, according to website Downdetector, which publishes the status of outages in real time. Many clients posted to social platform X to alert […]
Bank of America has a new $500 bonus for customers who open a business checking account. This offer is available nationwide and direct deposit is not required, which makes it available to more people. Let’s see how this bonus works, and who is eligible.
How to Earn This Bonus
Here’s how to earn this $500 bonus:
Open a new eligible Bank of America checking account using offer code MCC500CIS.
Deposit $15,000 or more in new money directly into the new checking account within 30 days of account opening.
Maintain your checking account balance at $15,000 or above daily from days 31 to 120 after opening your account.
Actively use the account by doing one of the following within 120 days of opening:
Make at least one qualifying direct deposit
Send a payment through Zelle using your newly acquired checking account
Make a Bank of America Mobile Check Deposit
Use Bank of America Bill Pay to send a payment
Bank of America Advantage SafeBalance Banking, Bank of America Advantage Plus Banking and Bank of America Advantage Relationship Banking for Wealth Management accounts are eligible for this offer. Bank of America Advantage SafeBalance Banking® for Family Banking accounts are not eligible for this offer.
Are You Eligible?
Here are the eligibility details for this bonus:
This bonus is available nationwide
You are not eligible for this offer if you were an owner or co-owner of a Bank of America personal eligible checking account within the last twelve (12) months.
Clients must have a U.S. domestic address (this includes Puerto Rico and P.O. Boxes) to qualify for this offer. Clients with any foreign address are not eligible for this offer.
Offer limited to one incentive per client.
Account Fees
Advantage SafeBalance Banking account has a $4.95 annual fee that can be waived with a $500 balance, or if one of the account owners is under 25 years old.
There is no early closing fee.
Guru’s Wrap-Up
This is a good bonus from Bank of America and it doesn’t require a direct deposit. The offer is available online and nationwide.
You will need to open a new business checking account and deposit $15,000 within 30 days. It’s best to make the deposit closer to the 30th day. You then need to keep that balance from days 31 to 120 after opening your account. So that’s about 90+ days. That makes it about 13% APY which is a very good rate, although for only three months.
Bank bonuses are a great way to earn some extra income, often from the comfort of your home. You can take a look at my bank bonus results for 2022 where I made over $6,000. If this bonus is not for you, then you can check our full list of available bank bonuses. You can also access bonuses available in your state by visiting dannydealguru.com/tag/NY-bank-bonus/. Just replace NY with your state or with “nationwide”.
Bank of America is once again offering select cardmembers a sweet spending bonus. This offer is being presented over the phone when you call customer service.
With this offer you will receive a $175 statement credit when you spend $1,500 or more by December 31, 2024. While this seems like a retention offer, it is often extended even to cardholders who don’t plan to close an account.
We have seen this exact offer in the past as well, and phone reps will present it to you when calling to ask about a lower APR, product changing, closing a card, or any other reason really. You could also just call and ask for this specific offer, or ask if there are any offers available in your account.
It is also possible to select on which Bank of America credit card you want to use the offer, in case you have more than one card.
Customer demographics play a role in AI-driven chatbot adoption at financial institutions. “Having a one-size-fits-all strategy [for AI deployment] is not the best strategy to have,” Rahul Kumar, vice president and general manager of financial services at AI-driven customer experience provider Talkdesk, told Bank Automation News. “Getting a better understanding of the segments that you […]
Ally Financial faces two class action lawsuits in the wake of a data breach earlier this year. Plaintiff Sebastian Owens, among others in the class action suit, according to court documents filed in the District Court of Western District of North Carolina on Sept. 7, are suing Ally Financial subsidiary Detroit-based Ally Bank for: […]
Bank of America is investing in technology initiatives as automation and digitalization remain priorities. The $3.2 trillion bank spends $12 billion annually on technology, a Bank of America spokesperson told Bank Automation News. Nearly a third of that $12 billion is spent on technology initiatives including innovation, Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said Sept. 10 at […]
An 80-hour workweek means working from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. six days a week — not the norm for most Americans, who log an average of 34 hours per week.
But for some junior bankers on Wall Street, an 80-hour week maximum workweek will be a relief.
JPMorgan Chase is now instituting a limit to working hours after new investigations showed that junior investment bankers are putting in more than 100 hours per week.
Bank of America is also trying to enforce an 80-hours per week cap with a new time reporting tool, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous sources. The tool will reportedly roll out next week and ask junior bankers to log daily hours instead of weekly hours. It also asks for more detail about what the bankers are working on and which senior employees are managing them on each assignment.
The changes come after the death of 35-year-old Bank of America junior banker Leo Lukenas III earlier this year. Lukenas joined Bank of America in 2023 as an associate and passed away in May 2024 from a blood clot in his heart. Though the coroner’s report didn’t link the death to overwork, Lukenas had reportedly been working 110-hour weeks on a $2 billion acquisition for the bank and indicated before his death that he wanted to leave because of the long hours.
A WSJ investigation in August reported that Bank of America bosses routinely pressured junior bankers to lie about the number of hours they worked, circumventing policies implemented a decade ago after the death of an investment banking intern in Bank of America’s London office.
After the investigation, Bank of America asked junior bankers to go to higher-ups or human resources if managers overworked them. The new time reporting tool is also intended to make it harder for junior bankers to downplay how many hours they spend in the office and keep managers more accountable to the bank’s limits.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley still have no policy limits on how many hours analysts and associates can work, but Goldman has a “protected Saturday” policy that blocks out Friday from 9 p.m. to Sunday at 9 a.m. as time off.
JLL Hotels & Hospitality group announced that it secured $620 million in acquisition financing for Hyatt Regency Orlando, a 1,641-key, AAA Four Diamond resort in Central Florida.
JLL represented affiliates of RIDA Development Corporation and an Ares Management Real Estate fund to secure the floating-rate, five-year loan through Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank on behalf of borrowers.
This premier resort offers spacious guest rooms averaging 453 square feet and suites averaging 846 square feet. The accommodations feature marble-accented bathrooms, sleeper sofas, mini-fridges and 65-inch streaming TVs.
Guests can also enjoy in a variety of amenities, including six dining options, a 24-hour fitness center, tennis courts, a spa and an outdoor pool. Furthermore, the hotel features 315,000 square feet of meeting and event space along with its three direct connections to the Orange County Convention Center (“OCCC”), the second largest convention center in the United States.
Located at 9801 International Drive, the property also provides exceptional proximity to top Orlando demand generators, such as Walt Disney World and Universal Studios Florida and Universal Islands of Adventure. Both attractions are conveniently less than a 15-minute drive away. Additionally, Universal Orlando is constructing Epic Universe, its largest theme park in the United States spanning 750 acres, situated just minutes from the hotel. Epic Universe is set to open in 2025.
Hyatt Regency Orlando sold for $1.02 billion to joint venture, or about $622,000 per guest room.
The JLL Hotels & Hospitality team was led by Americas CEO Kevin Davis, Managing Director Mike Huth and Senior Director Barnett Wu.
“We are pleased to have worked together with RIDA, Ares, and Hyatt in this transaction,” said Davis. “We enjoyed working with the sponsors in their strategic vision for the future of the Orlando convention district and look forward to continuing to work with all the stakeholders in the future.”
JLL’s Hotels & Hospitality Group has completed more transactions than any other hotels and hospitality real estate advisor over the last five years, totaling $83 billion worldwide. The group’s 370-strong global team in over 20 countries also closed more than 7,350 advisory, valuation and asset management assignments.
(Update: readers note that Bank of America does a similar thing on their business cards which they call CORP account. And Wells Fargo also has something similar.)
A lot of us who signed up for a U.S. Bank business card gets confused about this so I thought it worth a post:
When you sign up for U.S. Bank business cards, the bank opens up two unique accounts for your card. One looks like a regular card account and the other is something called a “Central Bill Account.” That Central account has a separate account number, and feeds from the regular card account; any purchase made on the card account shows up as money owed on both accounts.
I believe the idea might be that the card account details are informational – something for the employee; you won’t ever see the bank say that the card owes anything since really it’s the business who owes the money, not the employee. On the other hand, the Central Bill Account is the business account which actually owes the money.
You’ll even see differing balances on the two accounts since any amount that was billed to you gets removed from the employee card side of things. (The card account only shows the new charges, even when the old charges have not yet been paid off, whereas the Central account shows the full balance, as any other bank would do it.)
The card account will show $0 minimum payment due, even when you have a minimum payment owed. You’ll even get a statement saying that you don’t owe any minimum payment, and if you don’t make the payment you’ll get hit with a late fee since you really do owe a minimum payment. Again, I believe the idea is that ‘you’ as the employee don’t owe anything since the business owes it, and that’s billed to the Central Billing Account of the business.
My advice: Just ignore the main card account and only use the Central Billing Account for everything, including statements. There’s another option to call in and have them remove the Central Billing Account, and then your card should operate normally.
For some reason I got this Central Billing Account only on my Triple Cash business card, not on my Leverage business which I signed up a few months earlier. Reader Shawn tells us that there’s actually an option to select during card signup whether to have this Central Billing feature or not.
When you have multiple U.S. Bank business cards it’s possible to set them up that they all feed into the same Central Billing Account for simpler bill management. For our readership, I’d suggest that most of us will prefer declining the Central Billing option. I must have mistakenly signed up for it when applying for the Triple Cash, but not when applying for the Leverage card (or maybe it wasn’t yet an option then).
In the image below, the top account is my Leverage card which works normally. The bottom two accounts are both the same Triple Cash card with two separate entries in the online login (and, confusingly, differing balances). Again, I just ignore the regular card and use only the Central Billing Account.
Financial institutions are investing in their mobile and digital experiences as consumers flock to online channels for self-service banking. “Consumers are really demanding more and more and expecting that the mobile banking experience at their fingertips is largely the gateway into the relationship now with the [financial institution],” Allison Cerra, chief marketing officer at Alkami […]
Strategist Savita Subramanian called the dividend trade a “pain trade,” meaning the bulk of investors are not properly positioned for the potential upside gains in dividend-paying stocks.
“Over $6 trillion sits in US money market funds as the Fed is poised to start cutting rates,” Subramanian said in a note this week. “Bond funds have seen record flows YTD, but we see more opportunities within equities for investors searching for yield.”
There are more than 200 S&P 500 stocks that offer a higher real return potential than the 2% offered by the 10-year Treasury yield, according to the note, and about 75% of those stocks are under-owned by professional investors.
Some of the highest-yielding S&P 500 companies include Walgreens Boot Alliance, Altria, Verizon, Ford, and AT&T. And while the S&P 500 as a whole offers a dividend yield of about 1.25%, there are nearly 300 S&P 500 stocks that offer a higher yield.
“Overall, we expect dividends to make up a larger proportion of returns than the outsized price returns and multiple expansion of the past decade,” Subramanian said.
BMO’s Brian Belski is another Wall Street strategist who expects big gains to be had from dividend paying stocks, especially after their lackluster performance since the October 2022 stock market bottom.
“We believe these stocks have turned the corner and recent relative strength is likely to persist in the coming months,” Belski said in a note on Tuesday. “With the Fed now likely to cut rates sooner than previously anticipated, the likely drop in longer-term yields in response should provide a boost.”
As investors hunt for yield at a time when interest rates are about to fall, dividend-paying stocks could be the underloved area of the stock market that is set to boom.
(Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. disclosed its third disposal of Bank of America Corp. shares this month — paring its massive, profitable bet on the lender by a total of more than $3 billion.
Most Read from Bloomberg
The conglomerate, which started building an investment in the bank in 2011 and has long reigned as the top shareholder, sold $767 million of the stock from July 25 to July 29, according to a regulatory filing Monday. That and prior sales this month reduced Berkshire’s stake by a total of 6.9%.
Still, Berkshire holds almost 962 million shares, the filing shows — worth $39.5 billion at Monday’s closing price.
The sales mark Buffett’s biggest pullback from a bet that has long served as a prominent vote of confidence in the stewardship of Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan. The legendary 93-year-old investor is cashing out with the price up 22% this year.
Representatives for Berkshire and Bank of America didn’t respond to messages seeking comment outside normal business hours.
Buffett initially plowed $5 billion into Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America at a dark time. The company was facing mounting legal liabilities after the 2008 financial crisis, and shareholders were growing anxious about the toll that was taking on its capital.
Buffett has said he was in the bathtub when he came up with the idea of intervening, arranging to acquire preferred stock and the right to buy common shares. His imprimatur quelled public doubts and soon sent the stock higher, creating a massive paper profit.
Berkshire kept investing in Bank of America in the decade that followed, eventually seeking regulatory approval to amass a stake surpassing 10%. Last year, as Buffett adjusted financial-industry bets and exited some, he called out Bank of America as one to keep.
“I like Brian Moynihan enormously,” he said that April. “I just don’t want to sell it.”
Investors are confident the Federal Reserve will be lowering interest rates by the end of its September meeting.
As of Tuesday morning, markets were pricing in a 100% chance of an interest rate cut in September, per the CME FedWatch Tool, up from a 70% chance a month ago.
“Recent data have showed a continued softening in the labor market and substantial cooling in inflation pressures, importantly in the all important shelter category,” Deutsche Bank chief US economist Matthew Luzzetti wrote in a July 12 research note, which included a projection for a September rate cut. “These developments should materially impact the outlook for monetary policy.”
Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Monday that recent data has added “somewhat” to the central bank’s confidence that inflation is falling to its target. However, the Fed chair declined to specify what exactly that means for when the Fed will cut.
“I’m not going to be sending signals on any particular meeting,” he said. “We are going to make these decisions meeting by meeting and the evolving data and the balance of risks.” Powell said during an interview at the Economic Club of Washington.
Regardless of when exactly the cut comes, investors now feel confident that the path forward for interest rates is lower. The further confidence that those cuts are coming soon has been driving a broad stock market rally.
The most-loved areas of the market of the past year have underperformed as investors rotate into sectors outside of tech.
The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF, which tracks the group of large tech stocks that led the 2023 stock market rally, is down more than 3% in the past five days. Meanwhile, Real Estate (XLRE) and Industrials (XLI), both interest rate-sensitive sectors, have been the market’s biggest winners over the same time period, rising about 5%.
The small-cap Russell 2000 (RUT) index is up more t 10% and finally breached its 2022 high for the first time during the current bull market.
“If this trade continues, if the prospect for a rate cut is still in play for this fall, then we could finally see the bull wake up, and that’s good news for all investors,” Ritholtz Wealth Management chief market strategist Callie Cox told Yahoo Finance on Monday.
Bank of America continued to see digital adoption grow during the second quarter while keeping up with the digital needs of clients by looking to AI. “AI has moved from cost savings ideas to enhancing the quality of our customer interactions,” Chief Executive Brian Moynihan said during today’s second-quarter earnings call. The bank […]
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Leonid Shteyn. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Last year, I started looking for ways to make more money from my retirement savings. I’m 70, and my wife, who is also retired, is 68. We were worried about having enough money to live with rising inflation. We also wanted to have something to leave our four grandchildren, two of whom have special needs.
I researched investment options online and eventually reached out to a friend. He connected me to a company he was investing in. I checked the company out online, and everything seemed above board. I spoke with a professional financial planner tied to the company.
Still, I was cautious. I opened an account with just $250. Then, I transferred $10,000. When that investment began to grow, I wanted to go all in. I withdrew $100 from the account to make sure it was legit. After that withdrawal was processed, I transferred all my money: $256,470.
Things quickly became strange
After that, things started to get strange. The so-called investment company asked me to take out a line of credit. They encouraged me to invest in bitcoin and started charging me steep commissions.
One day, I got an email, reportedly from a blockchain, the digital wallet where people keep bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. When I looked closely, I noticed that one digit in the email was off—it was a scam meant to look like an official blockchain communication.
That’s when I knew something was very wrong.
I trusted the big bank that the scammers used
Still, the so-called investment company called me, asking for more money. I got my own lawyer, who looked up the company’s legal representation. He couldn’t find any licensed lawyer with the name I’d been given. Next, I hired a private investigator. He tracked one scammer to Bulgaria and another to the US.
My lawyer realized that I had sent most of my funds to an account at Bank of America. As an immigrant, I trusted Bank of America intrinsically. I never would have transferred money to a small bank or international establishment, but if you can’t trust them, who can you trust?
Unfortunately, I feel Bank of America failed me terribly. Even after my lawyer alerted them to what was happening, they cleared a check I’d written to the scammers. They ignored requests from my bank to look at the fraud, and after three requests, my bank gave up.
Within three months, I went from having a healthy retirement savings to having $20,000 in the bank. With lawyer fees and the private investigator, I was out nearly $300,000.
Older people, like myself, need help to protect themselves
This whole debacle is no one’s fault but my own. The thing is, I’m a smart guy. I ran a major business for 30 years. I am good at vetting people—or at least I thought.
What frustrates me is that the lack of government oversight allows scams like this to thrive. I contacted my local police department, and they said they’d investigate. I didn’t hear from them, so I called back. They told me they have 600 cases like this and only three investigators. When I heard that, I knew the chances of my case being solved were slim to none.
People always ask me what advice I’d give other seniors, but I think that’s the wrong question. Scammers will always exist, and people, especially older people, will always be vulnerable. We need to be able to trust the government and major institutions like Bank of America to stop this fraud. I believe they don’t because they make money in interest and fees from these fraudulent accounts.
My retirement looks a lot different now
I’ve started from scratch a lot in my life. I immigrated from the Czech Republic to New York in 1989 and later moved from New York to Texas. But it’s hard to start over at 70. I’ve been sending out my résumé and looking for work as a consultant, but I haven’t had any leads.
I’m lucky to have a house and cars that are paid off and still have some money in the bank. I’ve abandoned my dream of helping my grandkids or traveling in retirement. I’m just hoping my wife and I have enough to live on.
Editor’s note: In a statement to Business Insider, Bank of America said: “We don’t want any bank’s clients to become victims of scams. We try to work with victims and their banks to return the funds when feasible, but unfortunately, this is not always possible. We encourage clients to do thorough due diligence to ensure that they are transferring funds to legitimate businesses.”
Marko Kolanovic, JPMorgan Chase’s chief global market strategist and co-head of global research, is leaving the bank, according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg News.
Kolanovic, who has been at JPMorgan for 19 years, is “exploring other opportunities,” the memo stated. Dubravko Lakos-Bujas will lead market strategy and become chief market strategist, overseeing cross-asset, equity and macro. Hussein Malik will be the sole head of global research.
Stephen Dulake and Nicholas Rosato will co-lead fundamental research, a new team that brings together credit and equity research.
A JPMorgan spokesperson declined to comment. Kolanovic, Lakos-Bujas, Malik, and Rosato didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. Dulake declined to comment.
The move follows a disastrous two-year stretch of stock-market calls by Kolanovic. He was steadfastly bullish in much of 2022 as the S&P 500 Index sank 19% and strategists across Wall Street lowered their expectations for equities. He then turned bearish just as the market bottomed, missing last year’s 24% surge in the S&P 500 as well as the 14% gain in the first half of this year. — Alexandra Semenova, Bloomberg News
JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citigroup were among the big banks that announced plans to increase their dividends following the Federal Reserve’s annual stress tests.
Bloomberg
The nation’s eight largest banks will all increase their dividends following affirmation from the Federal Reserve that they would have plenty of capital to power through a worst-case economic scenario.
each announced late Friday that they plan to add to the size of shareholders payouts. Bank of New York Mellon, State Street Corp. and Fifth Third Bancorp, which are also among the country’s 25 largest banks, signaled the same.
The announcements come on the heels of the Wednesday release of the Federal Reserve’s annual stress test results. The Fed found that the 31 large and midsize banks it tested could maintain capital levels above regulatory minimums when run through a recession scenario, but not without strain.
The tests, which modeled a severe global recession with high unemployment and a real estate crisis, found that banks could see losses of nearly $685 billion. Some banks’ balance sheets took a bigger hypothetical hit than others.
The annual stress tests results guide the Fed in setting banks’ so-called stress capital buffers, which are added on top of a common equity tier 1 capital ratio of 4.5% to calculate minimum capital requirements. Some of the largest banks — including Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan, and Wells — are on the hook for an additional capital surcharge of at least 1%.
In practice, minimum current capital requirements range from 7% to nearly 14%, though many banks maintain levels far above their compliance baselines, especially amid policy uncertainty. The so-called Basel III endgame, a proposal from the Fed, could boost the big banks’ minimum capital requirements by about 16%, but movement on the rule is on pause.
Roughly half of the 31 banks that were stress-tested this year released statements after the stock market closed on Friday about their preliminary stress capital buffers. Nine of those companies said that their preliminary stress capital buffer is larger than last year’s, while the buffer was smaller at four banks, and it was unchanged at three more.
The Fed is expected to finalize the final stress capital buffers for the stress-tested banks by Aug. 31.
What the big banks said
Goldman Sachs reported one of the biggest increases in its stress capital buffer, as that number rose from 5.5% last year to 6.4%.
“This increase does not seem to reflect the strategic evolution of our business and the continuous progress we’ve made to reduce our stress loss intensity, which the Federal Reserve had recognized in the last three tests,” Chairman and CEO David Solomon said in a press release. “We will engage with our regulator to better understand their determinations.”
BofA also said that its stress capital buffer will rise this autumn. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based megabank is planning for a buffer of 3.2%, up from 2.5% currently. Wells Fargo said that it expects its stress capital buffer to rise from 2.9% to 3.8%, while JPMorgan announced that it anticipates that its buffer will increase from 2.9% to 3.3%.
The new stress capital buffers at all of the affected banks will be effective from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30 of next year.
Among the four U.S. megabanks, only Citi’s buffer is expected to decrease, moving from 4.3% to 4.1%. The decrease comes amid Citi’s “ongoing efforts to simplify” itself, CEO Jane Fraser noted in a press release Friday.
Under Fraser, the New York-based bank, which has far-flung operations, is working on a massive, multiyear restructuring that involves selling or winding down lagging businesses and eliminating 20,000 jobs, or about 10% of its total workforce, by the end of 2026.
Citi is planning to hike its quarterly dividend from 53 cents to 56 cents, but it did not commit Friday to restarting share buybacks. Instead, the bank said that it will “continue to assess share repurchases on a quarter-to-quarter basis.”
JPMorgan was the lone bank that announced plans Friday to both increase its dividend and authorize a new share buyback plan. The $4.1 trillion-asset bank said it would raise its dividend by 10 cents, to $1.25 per share, for the third quarter.
“The board’s intended dividend increase, our second this year, would represent a sustainable level of capital distribution to our shareholders, which is supported by our strong financial performance and continuous investments in our business,” Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said in a prepared statement.
He added that the share repurchase program, which could total $30 billion, provides “additional flexibility to return excess capital to our shareholders over time, as and when appropriate.”
The outlook for regional banks
Among the 16 banks that released information about their stress capital buffers on Friday, Truist Financial is one of the four whose buffer will decrease. The $535 billion-asset company said its preliminary buffer — 2.9%, down from 2.8% currently — does not include the impact of the recent sale of its insurance arm or a balance sheet repositioning that took place in early May.
Truist plans to keep its common stock dividend flat, but the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company also announced that its board of directors has authorized a $5 billion share repurchase program through 2026 that will commence during the third quarter of this year. In April, Truistexecutives said they hoped to “resume meaningful share repurchases later in the year.“
Citizens Financial Group, which passed the Fed’s stress test with the second-lowest projected capital level out of the 31 banks tested, announced it would more than double the size of its share buyback plan. The Providence, Rhode Island-based company also said that its stress capital buffer increased from 4% to 4.5%.
CEO John Woods said in a statement that the Fed’s test modeled a decline in pre-provision net revenue, a common profit metric in the industry, that was much worse than what Citizens projected in its own self-exam. The $220.4 billion-asset asset bank said that it expects its upcoming second-quarter CET1 ratio to be 160 basis points above its regulatory minimum of 9%.
Citizens didn’t mention a shift on dividends, but said it will “assess potential changes to its capital distributions as conditions warrant.”
Also on Friday, Cincinnati, Ohio-based Fifth Third announced that it plans to recommend a two-cent per share increase to its quarterly cash dividend on its common stock in September, “consistent with its planned capital actions submitted to the Federal Reserve.”
Fifth Third’s stress capital buffer ticked up from 2.5% to 3.2%, but the $214.5 billion-asset bank noted that its CET1 ratio of 10.5% is well above its required minimum, which as of last year was 7%.
Earn Up to $750 with Bank of America Savings Account
Bank of America is sending out emails with an offer to earn a bonus of up to $750 with a new or existing savings account. To get the maximum bonus you will need to deposit $100,000. Check out the details below.
Offer Details
Enroll by 9/15/24 using the link in the email
Deposit new money into a new or existing personal savings account within 30 days of enrolling:
$20,000+ for $250 bonus
$50,000+ for $500 bonus
$100,000+ for $750 bonus
Maintain that balance from day 31 to day 90 after enrollment.
Guru’s Wrap-up
This is a targeted offer that can earn you up to $750 bonus with a new or existing Bank of America savings account. You must have received it directly through mail or email in order to qualify.
The best options however are the $250 and $500 bonuses. Considering that you need to keep the money in the account for 60 days, that would give you a 7.5% and 6% APY respectively.
Bank bonuses are a great way to earn some extra income, often from the comfort of your home. You can take a look at my bank bonus results for 2022 where I made over $6,000. If you are not targeted for this bonus, then you can check our full list of available bank bonuses.
