Bank of America may slash annual costs by an additional $3 billion in the next stage of chief executive officer Brian Moynihan's expense-cutting plan; this will include wealth management.

Bank of America may slash annual costs by an additional $3 billion in the next stage of chief executive officer Brian Moynihan's expense-cutting plan; this will include wealth management, according to Bloomberg, which cited comments made at an employee meeting.

The firm declined to comment on the report.

The US lender, which has already targeted $5 billion in cuts from retail and back-office operations, may reach total savings of $6 billion to $8 billion a year, Brian Moynihan said during an employee meeting last week, according to the news service. The latest plan will put investment and commercial banking, trading, and wealth-management units under the spotlight and is scheduled for April this year.

In the first wave, the bank announced 30,000 job cuts from consumer banking, credit-card, home loan and support operations at the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender. It is not clear how many jobs are targeted this time.

The report did not elaborate on the extent to which wealth management will be affected by the moves.

Managers will reduce the “overall cost structure of the company; through New BAC we've identified $5 billion,” Moynihan said last week, cited in Bloomberg. “We'll pick up more in Phase 2, that ought to get you $1.5 billion to $2 billion a quarter” in total savings.

Moynihan has told analysts that his latest round of cost cuts will produce smaller savings than the first because there are fewer employees in corporate and institutional units. Expenses will start to decline in the second half of this year, he was quoted as saying.

The US lender posted a $1.99 billion fourth-quarter profit earlier this month, from one-time gains including the sale of holdings in a Chinese bank.