In its earning report and call earlier this week, Bank of America announced that it would begin testing new banking offerings in select markets in December as part of its “new consumer bank strategy.”  The new strategy comes as the bank tries to figure out sources of revenue to make up for the end of especially lucrative automatic overdraft fees. The bank’s hope seems to be that the new products will somehow provide “a better banking experience” and “incent customers to bring more business” to the bank. The bank’s new eBanking option appears to have been a first step toward this new strategy.  Still, what exactly the new offerings will be is unclear and the language in the earnings release is vague.  Here’s the exact text from the earnings release about the strategy change, which hints at what the new offerings may be.  New Consumer Bank Strategy As a result of the legislation and other changes in the environment, the company is changing the way its consumer bank does business, focusing on a relationship enhancement strategy designed to incent customers to bring more business and to make pricing more upfront and transparent. This change moves away from a dependence on penalty fees, which the industry had adopted over the years, and provides the customer with a better banking experience. These changes are expected to result in additional revenue.  Bank of America has begun to introduce new customer solutions designed to meet these goals. In August, the company began offering eBanking, which allows customers who primarily use such alternative channels as online banking and ATMs, to be rewarded with better pricing. The bank plans to begin testing new offerings in December that will provide customers choices on how to pay for their banking services and reward them for using certain products or bringing more balances. The company is also considering other new products in the payments area that would meet the evolving needs of specific customer groups with testing scheduled to begin next year.  So what on earth is the bank hinting at here? The answer could depend on if you’re a cynic or an optimist.  If you’re a cynic, for instance, rewarding customers for certain behavior may mean that you won’t have to pay if you have a certain amount of money in the account; in other words, the reward is no fee and nothing more. But if you’re an optimist, there is the chance that something more generous may be on the horizon, especially considering the increasing competition in the reward checking account space from start-up operations like PerkStreet.  The cynic similarly would look at the words “additional revenue” and think that the bank is likely to raise fees on checking accounts and even add new ones or higher ones for, say, debit rewards programs. The optimist, meanwhile, could interpret “new products” for “specific groups” as suggesting that the bank will actually release something inventive and useful like its Keep the Change program from a few years back.  A company spokeswoman, Anne Pace, said Bank of America’s chief executive, Brian Moynihan, also hinted that the new offerings would serve banking needs ranging from basic to more sophisticated and that customers would have more choice about how they pay for each offering.  According to Ms. Pace, customers “will choose to pay through their behaviors — either banking through self-service channels or by their frequency of payment activity through a debit card or credit card. Some will choose to bring us more of their business through higher balances, their mortgage, etc. Others will simply choose to pay a monthly maintenance fee.”  So readers, are you cynical or hopeful? What do you think is going to happen? What would you like the bank to do in the way of giving more to people who do more business with them?
Bank of America plans to begin testing new banking offerings in December but it's vague about what they will be. Share your predictions and hopes about what they will be.