Bank of America (BofA) has received the 2024 Celent Model Bank award for customer-centred innovation after combining five apps into one.
BofA recently introduced a significant update to its mobile app, aiming to ‘reimagine’ how its clients interact with their finances. The update combined five of its apps into one, allowing users to manage and view their full financial life more seamlessly.
The apps that have been merged include Bank of America, Merrill Edge, MyMerrill, Bank of America Private Bank and Benefits OnLine, which makes BofA one of the first banking apps in the industry to combine banking, investing and retirement banking into one digital space.
Nikki Katz, Head of Digital at Bank of America, commented: “Our mission is to continuously innovate and evolve our digital capabilities to provide best-in-class solutions for all of our clients.
“By combining five apps into one, we’re putting clients at the centre of the experience, with our full enterprise and next-gen technology at their fingertips.”
Four additional features of the new unified app include one personalised financial picture, a streamlined accounts overview experience, which provides clients a summary of their accounts across banking, investing, and retirement.
Furthermore, the app also contains a full suite of digital tools in a single app, as a platform home to BofA’s suite of digital solutions, including Life Plan and the Net Worth Estimator Tool.
Thirdly, there is a payments and transfer hub, allowing clients to pay bills and transfer money. Lastly, clients are able to send domestic and international wire transfers in more than 140 currencies to 200 countries, starting from March.
Celent, a global research and advisory firm for the financial services industry, awarded BofA the 2024 Celent Model Bank award, recognising its user-friendly design experience.
Bob Meara, Principal Analyst at Celent, said: “Just as banks race to market with unified consumer and business banking apps, Bank of America raises the bar even higher. This customer-centred initiative may be conceptually simple, but it represents a huge win-win for Bank of America and its millions of clients.”
It has also been reported earlier this month that BofA is set to introduce Bitcoin ETFs following the surge of price of the cryptocurrency, which comes after the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved spot Bitcoin ETFs to be listed on national securities exchanges in January.
