Bank of America to expand services for small businesses
Responding to complaints that the nation’s giant banks don’t offer enough services for small businesses, Bank of America Corp. said Thursday that it was hiring 1,000 small-business bankers to work in branches throughout the country.
But during this time of tight credit, the main aim of these new bankers will not be to issue loans.
“They are not loan officers,” said Kerrie Campbell, Bank of America’s top small-business executive. “They are very relationship-oriented, focused on the broad needs of the small-business owners.”
Instead, the new bankers will reach out to local businesses with a variety of financial products and services, including bank accounts, payroll systems, pension plans and credit cards, along with loans.
“We really are expanding our capabilities and enhancing the service to small businesses,” Campbell said. “These folks will be in our local communities, living and working in the communities that they serve.”
The move is one of several such initiatives announced by the bank recently, including promising to increase lending to small and medium-size companies, and choosing its own contractors more frequently from among the ranks of smaller businesses.
In hiring the new bankers and placing them in branches — rather than in the office buildings where its commercial banking operations are located — BofA will be competing with the regional banks that currently serve most small-business needs.
But Gary Findley, an Anaheim consultant to community banks that specialize in small-business lending, said he didn’t see the big bank’s move as a threat to regional institutions.
“It’s the flavor of the month,” Findley said, pointing to announcements by a number of major banks that they hoped to gain more small-business clients. But he said that ultimately the large banks would not be able to deliver the customized service that smaller, more local institutions could provide.
“Even though they’ll have a small-business lender in the branch, do you think that small-business lender will have the authority to do anything? No,” Findley said. “They’ll have to kick it up the chain.”
The BofA pilot small-business programs will roll out over the next few months in Los Angeles, Dallas, Baltimore and Washington, Campbell said.
Most of the 1,000 bankers will be new hires, Campbell said, to be brought on board in the next several months. They will be targeting companies with revenue of $250,000 to $3 million.
Because BofA has 5,900 branches nationwide, most of them will handle small-business needs at more than one location, Campbell said.
