One highlight of the results is a dramatic rise in private banking staff interaction with clients compared with levels seen before the global pandemic struck. The data also shows a surging use of private banking mobile apps.

Bank of America’s global wealth management arm today said that its net income for the second quarter of 2020 - $624 million – had fallen by $452 million from the same period a year ago, with weaker revenues and higher credit loss provisions hitting the bottom line.

Revenues of $4.4 billion fell by 10 per cent year-on-year due to weaker net interest income and weaker transactional revenue. These falls offset deposit, loan and assets under management growth, Bank of America said in a statement.

Total client balances rose to $2.928 trillion at the end of June this year, rising from $2.898 trillion a year earlier. There were $3.6 billion of AuM flows in the latest quarter, down from $5.3 billion a year before. The pre-tax margin at this global wealth business narrowed to 19 per cent in Q2 from 29 per cent a year before. 

Within BoA’s private banking arm, it added almost 500 net new relationships in Q2. Teams were able to average 1,900 interactions a day with clients, skyrocketing by 79 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. That result highlights how firms have used digital platforms and other channels to massively ramp up client engagement. The group said that 77 per cent of clients are using an online or mobile platform across the private bank, and across Bank of America. Active use of the private banking mobile app has risen by 37 per cent.

Within Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, this segment added almost 6,000 net new households.

Throughout BoA as a whole, net income fell to $3.5 billion in Q2, from $7.3 billion a year ago; provision for credit losses dented the result, standing at $13.4 billion in Q2, up from just $900 million a year ago – highlighting how the pandemic has massively increased credit risk. At the end of June, the banking group had a Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio - a measure of a bank's financial strength - of 11.4 per cent, down from 12 per cent a year before.