Bank of America Eyes Growth in Employee Benefits as Morgan Stanley Ramps Up

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. is seeking to become a one-stop shop for employee benefits.

The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender is uniting its offerings for employers -- including retirement, health care savings, equity and deferred-compensation plans -- alongside its traditional banking and investing services. It’s also on a path to hire about 150 specialists in employee benefits across the U.S. for its combined Financial Life Benefits services.

“Companies are begging us to help their employees every day,” Lorna Sabbia, Bank of America’s head of retirement and personal wealth solutions, said at a briefing in New York. At the same time, “employees are stressed out” and seeking better tools to manage their finances, she said.

The bank wants to expand its workplace presence by tapping its existing corporate banking client roster. It has relationships with 95% of Fortune 1,000 companies, as well as 3 million small-business owners. Services can include financial-planning workshops at client offices, discounts on mortgages and bank accounts for employees, and bank branches on site, according to Aron Levine, head of consumer banking and investing.

The push comes as Morgan Stanley aims to attract new wealth-management clients from its stock-plan administrator, Shareworks, which has about 3,900 corporate customers. Over the next five to seven years, the bank expects to sign up more than 1 million employees to its digital wealth or financial-advisory services, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman said in an earnings call last month.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lananh Nguyen in New York at lnguyen35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Dan Reichl, Josh Friedman

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