The US banking group reported a broadly strong set of results for the first quarter of 2017.

The global wealth and investment arm of Bank of America today reported it made net income in the three months to March 31, 2017, of $770 million, a gain from $741 million made in the same period a year ago.

The bank also logged total revenue at the wealth and investment business of $4.59 billion, slightly higher than a year ago, when the figure came in at $4.47 billion, BoA said in a statement.

Non-interest expenses (mostly staffing costs) rose to $3.333 billion, up from $4273 billion. 

This group of the bank said it logged long-term flows of assets under management of $29.2 billion in Q1, against $18.9 billion in the previous quarter and reversing the small outflow $600 million a year earlier. This business made a pre-tax margin of 27 per cent, and an efficiency ratio – a common measure of how lean a firm is – of 73 per cent. The pre-tax margin was 26 per cent a year ago.

Total client balances stood at $2.585 trillion at the end of March this year, up from $2.466 trillion at the end of March last year. As far as assets under management are concerned, AuM stood at $946.8 billion, up from $890.7 billion a year earlier.

Among other details, BoA said it had a total of 18,435 wealth advisors (the figure includes those working in the Consumer Banking side, of 2,092).

For the whole of Bank of America, net income rose 40 per cent year-on-year to $4.9 billion, and earnings per share rose by 46 per cent to $0.41.

“We saw good client activity in our balanced portfolio of businesses: consumer spending was up, our wealth management business had strong asset management flows, investment banking fees rebounded nicely, and we continued to provide credit and capital to our corporate and institutional clients to help them drive the economy forward,” Brian Moynihan, chief executive, said in the statement.