The merger of Bank of America and Merrill Lynch could, in future, bear a bit more in the way of retirement fruit for those of its customers in the mass affluent set.
That set is defined by BofAML as those with $50,000 to $250,000 in investable assets.
To better meet their needs, Bank of America Corp. on Monday announced that it had completed the migration of Banc of America Investment Services Inc. self-directed accounts, Merrill Lynch Direct and Merrill Lynch Financial Advisory Center investment accounts onto the “fully operational” Merrill Edge platform.
“It’s a startup but one with $60 billion in assets already,” said Sallie Krawcheck, president of Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management, speaking on a media conference call Monday.
The company is initially making the system available to new clients in a pilot phase with the remaining 11 million or so Bank of America customers that meet the minimums (out of 57 million total customer and small business relationships) getting access later in the year.
This project will provide the captive Bank of America banking customer audience that meets the investable assets parameters above access to a self-directed investing account
or an account through the Merrill Edge Advisory Center.
Either offers a comprehensive account view online that includes 401(k) and brokerage accounts from Merrill Lynch as well as checking, savings, credit cards etc. from the Bank of America side.
Those selecting the Edge Advisory Center offering will have access to 600 Merrill Edge Financial Solutions Advisors.
To sweeten the pot and encourage adoption the company also announced a new Platinum Privileges program that is supposed to deliver higher levels of service and rewards for those maintaining $50,000 or more in deposit accounts with Bank of America or investment balances with Merrill Edge.
Dean Athanasia, an executive with the Bank of America Mass Affluent and Small Business group said during the media call the offering represented the broadest array of services available in the industry.
“Technologically we have attached Merril Lynch to the Bank of America — the clients and advisers can see the full array of services available, for example, you [customers] can use any of our ATMs, I can see everything from Bank of America accounts to mortgage to investment accounts,” he said.
There are millions of mass affluent consumers in the US that lack direction in terms of planning for retirement. Thus far within financial services only the online brokerages have shown major interest in providing this audience with much in the way of active self-directed products and services.
With its full suite of banking products and the efforts to integrate its technology on both sides of the BofAML juggernaut, this could prove to be an interesting experiment if there is substantial uptake.
The Tech Update in next week’s issue will discuss this in much more detail.
For more information visit
Bank of America online, though there does not appear to be any big online marketing push going on as yet.
Visit this
Merrill Lynch page for more information on that platform (there is a tour video of the Edge platform in the lower right hand corner).
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