Digital Transformation and Fintech Strategies of Bank of America

Diving into Bank of America’s Organization-wide Digital Transformation Strategies and Initiatives

This study covers the digital transformation initiatives of Bank of America Corp (BofA), which operates in more than 35 countries worldwide. It has a legacy dated back to 1904 and is now providing a full stack of retail and corporate financial services to consumers, small businesses, corporations, governments, and institutions.

Technology advancements, changing customer expectations, and emerging Fintech companies are changing the landscape of financial services industry. This digital disruption is forcing banks and other financial services companies to embrace digital evolution and start embarking on their digital transformation journey. Going digital is the only way forward to stay relevant and to prevent new entrants and startups from stealing their market shares. In this study, the researcher presents an in-depth analysis into Bank of America’s digital transformation agenda in maintaining its position as the digital banking leader.

Bank of America has taken positive steps to expand its digital offerings and capabilities so as to maintain its competitive edge over its traditional competitors such as Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo as well as new non-depository competitors such as Amazon which has pivoted into the banking sector by offering products which are traditionally “financial” in nature.

Bank of America has put in place a firm-wide digital transformation strategy: the “High-Tech, High Touch” approach to drive better digital offerings, services, experiences and value for its customers. As part of its digital transformation blueprint, Bank of America had spent billions on cutting-edge innovations to uplift its technology play. It explores, identifies, evaluates, invests, develops and adopts disruptive technologies such as Blockchain, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Cloud and Biometrics. In addition to looking at what technologies Bank of America has adopted, we also have investigated on how it gains access to these technologies and how these technologies are incorporated and assimilated into Bank of America’s networks, systems, and infrastructure.

We all know that innovation is not just the about adoption of new technologies. Therefore, we also looked into how Bank of America eliminates, reduces, transforms and simplifies its complex and expensive legacy infrastructures inherited from multiple mergers and acquisitions in a move toward a software-defined infrastructure. We also deep dived into the revolution of Bank of America’s mobile banking experience, specifically into its multiple redesigns and revamps of mobile banking applications.

Furthermore, we have also looked at Bank of America’s organizational structure in relation to digital transformation and how its “transformation unit” develops and executes digital transformation initiatives. We have also further explored the Fintech synergies, engagements, partnerships and collaborations formed by Bank of America with leading digital players.

Finally, we have selected the top 3 best practices that incumbents can learn from Bank of America’s digital transformation journey. These recommendations are pinpointed and will get traditional market participants to start thinking about embracing the Fintech wave and help to defend their market from disruption.

We have added an executive summary that brings all of this together in a crisp form, to help busy executives get the gist of the study and then read only those sections in detail that matter to them.