Holly O’Neill | A Consumer-Centric Culture

Jen Tescher:
Welcome to Emerge Everywhere. I’m Jennifer Tescher, journalist turned financial health champion. As founder and CEO of the Financial Health Network, I’ve spent my career connecting forward-thinking leaders to the growing Finhealth Movement. Now I’m sharing these conversations with you. Discover how these visionaries are challenging the status quo and improving financial health for their customers, employees, and communities.

Holly O’Neill has spent the majority of her career at Bank of America, raising the fortune 50 companies profile to become one of the most trusted financial services brands in the country. As a relatively new President of Retail Banking, Holly has been an integral part of thinking past the mouse trap that has been banking products and services to design experiences around the actual financial health needs of consumers. She believes that when you put the client first, the business will grow, and the bank’s 30 million retail customers may be a testament to that very idea.

Holly, welcome to Emerge Everywhere.

Holly O’Neill:
Great to be here, Jennifer.

Jen Tescher:
So you became the President of Retail Banking for Bank of America back in September of 2021. So that means you’re in the role now just about a year. How’s it going? And more importantly, how is it going for your customers given the state of the economy?

Holly O’Neill:
Well, first of all, it is coming up on a year, and it’s been a really exciting and fun year. I love the role. Our 30 million retail clients provide for some very exciting and challenging times. So that’s all good. So how is the consumer doing? And I’ll, I’ll share a few things with you, Jennifer, just on the whole for the consumer base, because we look at this every single day. And we look at a few things. We look at consumer spending. We look at borrowing behavior. We look at where we are from a lending health perspective. And from all measures, consumers are really healthy. They have really strong account balances. And I’ll share some facts and figures with you.

So on average, our consumers have account balances of about $15,000. That’s both checking and savings. That’s up about 8% year over year, and it’s up 44% since pre-pandemic. 

Jen Tescher:
Wow.

Holly O’Neill:
So they have a lot of money in their accounts. So that’s really positive. Second, spending and payments. Credit and debit payments, of which we see quite a bit come through the system, that’s up about 11% year over year. So really strong there. So consumers are spending. So not only are they spending, they have good account balance. And then, when you look at the lending side, they’re not running up; they’re borrowing. And so we look at borrowing every single day, and on an average basis, our consumers have unsecured debt of about $7,000. That’s down 13% since pre-pandemic.

And then, from a bank perspective, we obviously look at delinquencies and charge-offs. Those are also at historic lows. So not only do our consumer clients have good, healthy checking and savings balances, they’re spending, and they’re not running up their credit. And they’re in a much better position than they were pre-pandemic. So those things combined, I think, really point to a very strong and healthy consumer.

Jen Tescher:
And any sense of how inflation will affect these customers? Do you imagine that you’ll start to see a slow down in spending if inflation doesn’t come down, or that it will cause them to run off their balances more quickly?

Holly O’Neill:
Sure. So we are looking very closely at the impacts of inflation. And over the last several months, spending and payments have continued to say strong, not only from a total dollar volume perspective but also from a transactional perspective. So you’d expect to see the dollar volume go up with inflation because people are… It’s costing more to purchase the same goods. But also, the number of transactions clients are engaging in is also up. So they’re continuing that momentum.

Over the past couple of months, we have seen some shifts in what they’re spending on. So in the lower income levels, we’re definitely seeing more of their spend going towards groceries and gas, as a big example. Gas prices are at record high. So we are seeing more of their spend in gas. But they’re accounting for it in other ways. So overall, we’re seeing a little bit of a shift in the categories of our clients, but the patterns are really strong. And again, I go back to, coupled with strong account balances. I would expect those patterns to continue. But obviously, we watch this every day.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. So I’ve really been fascinated with your rise at the bank because, before taking on this role, you were responsible for client care, if you will. And you’ve been really outspoken about the importance of putting the consumer at the center, which is music to my ears. And I’d love to know a little bit more about, as a leader, how you go about building that type of culture.

Holly O’Neill:
Right. Thanks for acknowledging that, Jennifer. Client care is how I came into the consumer business. And I’m still responsible for it, even in this broader role. And it’s actually a passion of mine. It’s really what attracted me to move into this business. And at the heart of making that move, it’s all about listening to clients at all levels of the organization. From all of our associates who sit in financial centers or call centers, or people who are driving strategy in our digital space, we are always listening to clients through a variety of mediums. So that is number one.

Two is we rolled out – we talked about client care quite a bit with our teams initially. And we realized we had to define for every level of the organization what that meant. What does it mean to provide great care for your clients? So we came up with some very simple ways to explain this to the entire organization. Our clients can count on being heard all the time. They can count on us to get things done. They can count on an expert when they need one. And they can count on the right solutions.

So we tried to make it really simple and digestible for our very large business. We have over 60,000 people in our consumer business. So we felt it was really important to define, for our clients, what they can expect. And that really helped us gain some momentum. So always listening to our clients, sharing and articulating what those principles are, and then we also measure experience at very detailed levels. So those three things in combination really drive creating this culture.

And that measurement, the last thing I mentioned. We measure experience. We send out tens of millions of surveys to our clients after they interact with us in any channel. Digital, financial center, call center, if they’re underwriting a mortgage with us, they’ll get a survey. In our small business team, they’ll get a survey. So across every channel that our clients interact with us in, we share surveys. We have a really good response rate. So we’re getting back over a million surveys a month directly from clients who are scoring us. And they’re scoring, if they’re interacting with an individual or if they’re interacting on the digital platform, we take all of that feedback, and we use it to identify opportunities for improvement. And we have really honest conversations internally about that.

So those are the few things that I think were really mission critical in shifting the culture that we have and really making it a client-first culture. And it’s a journey you’ll always be on. You’ll never have mastered it. But those are the really important foundations that we built that I think will continue to give us momentum as we move forward.

Jen Tescher:
So whether it’s a measure of customer care, or a measure of engagement, or survey results, what of that shows up on the bank’s overall scorecard? The handful of metrics that the institution follows to make sure that it’s holding itself accountable.

Holly O’Neill:
Right. We measure all of them. So our client experience scores for the retail business go all the way up to our board on a monthly dashboard. So that’s the key, too, is individual client service representatives; as an example, sitting in a financial center or sitting in a call center will see their own personal performance. And then we aggregate it all the way up for the business. We set targets and goals, and we report on it to our CEO, to Brian, and then to our board. So that is a really important measure of the success of our business is that continuously rising experience. And as we make enhancements in digital, or we shift products, or we come out with a new product, all of that should be inputs to driving those experience scores higher.

Jen Tescher:
So given your passion for centering the consumer, it makes a lot of sense to me that you would be a financial health champion. And earlier this year, under your leadership, the bank became the first financial institution to be certified by J.D. Power for this concept called financial health support. I wonder if you could share a little bit more about the bank’s financial health journey to date. I know it’s been over the course of months, if not years. And, in particular, how you made the case internally for a focus on financial health. A growing number of institutions are taking a look at thinking about financial health, but Bank of America has probably gone further than most, if not all, of the largest banks in this country. And so, I’d love to hear more about how you made it happen.

Holly O’Neill:
Sure. I’ll start with making the case for financial help first, and then I’ll go a bit into our journey. So the case was really easy from a – if you make your client successful, you’ll ultimately be successful. And always putting the client front and center was a super easy case to make. And it ties back to client satisfaction. We know that if we put our clients first, make them successful, and support them, we’ll achieve higher experience scores. And we know that when clients are happy with us, they broaden their relationship with us and/or they stay with us for a longer period of time. So that was really the very simple case that we made to invest in this long-term investment to build that foundation of financial health. So the case was really easy. It was put the client front and center, you’ll have a much happier and more satisfied client, which in turn, over the medium and long-term, helps you grow your business. So it was really simple.

And it has been a journey over the past decade. So we have been on this path around, number one, financial education for our clients. We have done a lot in the way of financial solution development, providing a wide spectrum of clients a variety of solutions to choose from. In the mass market, and with our lower income cohorts, that’s a very low-cost, transparent, simple solution set. 

And then, finally, it’s been the journey we’ve been on around our own approach and policies to support clients. And so, you’ve been there as part of our journey around NSF and overdraft fees and creating more transparency, so that’s an example of what I mean about our own policies and how we approach the segments and our clients. So financial education, the right solutions, always listening to clients, too, by the way, on the solutions that they want. And then always taking a look with a fresh perspective on our own policies and how we approach it, and adjusting along the way as the environment changes and as our clients change. So that’s been over a decade of work.

And again, similar to client experience, I think it will always be evolving because the client’s always evolving. The bars change and get raised, for example, with technology. So our clients now expect us to have a full suite of technology solutions to help them. And, in many ways, that bar was raised outside of financial services. So, not only do we have to look within financial services, but you have to look outside to see general consumer behavior and how you’re going to adapt to that to provide really a world-class experience for clients.

And again, just to wrap on this question, financial health is that foundation for us. And it encompasses everything that we do, how we devise the solutions, our financial education, and just how we evolve. How can we get better at creating a more personalized experience for our clients with their financial health in mind? How do we communicate with clients differently depending on what their own personal situation is? So that’s really where we’re taking it as we move forward.

Jen Tescher:
So it’s my understanding that the bank uses five pillars of financial health to guide its consumer work. Can you share what those pillars are with us and how they translate into tangible results?

Holly O’Neill:
Sure. So this was probably one of the first things we did is we embarked down this certification path, and we had to really think through what that framework was. And it’s pretty simple. I think it’s going to sound pretty intuitive. It’s simplification of finances for our clients. How do we create basic, transparent, simple solutions for people to use? The normal consumer digesting a banking solution wants it to be just that. They want it to be simple, transparent. They want to understand what they get, what they don’t get, and what it costs or what it doesn’t cost. So that’s simple ability to manage their finances. So that’s one.

Two is the ability to manage their money in a digital environment. Setting goals, accessing tools, tracking their spending, and financial security, too, by the way, is really important. So enabling our clients to manage their money in a really easy, seamless way. That’s two.

Third is leveraging experts. So this is really where I think the Bank of America value proposition comes in. And this is where I think we really differentiate is not only do you have a world-class digital platform, but you also come to the table with a cast of specialists that can interact with clients depending on what their need is. And we do that through 4,000 financial centers across the country, so it’s really that combination of the digital and physical, and those experts being the physical. Many of them sit in our financial center. Some of them are accessible via phone, but having those experts that are there when the client needs them. If they are going to purchase their first home, they probably want an expert to talk to. So having that expert there and ready for the clients when they need it.

And the fourth item on the list, and the fourth pillar, is building our clients’ knowledge. So it’s all about that financial education. Enabling them to make good, smart decisions. And that’s a journey. When you first embark on managing your own finances, no matter where you are, whether you’re 15 or 16 or 21, you’re learning along the way. You’re learning what credit is. You’re learning how to manage your cash flow and how to budget. So building that knowledge for them along the way, and making resources accessible, is really critical to that financial health foundation.

And then last, and definitely not least on this list, is providing help and support to clients when they need it. Whether that’s in digital, whether that’s through a phone call or a visit to a financial center. And this is where I think client choice comes to play, because, depending on how they need assistance or help or what their individual preferences are, would point them to digital calling or walking into a financial center. And so really being there to help them if an event occurs, if they have a question, that is mission critical.

And when you think about the evolution and the use of digital, it really has monopolized, now, the simple transaction. People are using digital all the time. But that, in many ways, puts even more pressure and importance on that one time you call or the one time a year, you walk into a financial center and really need help. So we’ve got to get that right and really make sure that expertise and support is there.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. So what I’m taking away from this is that your approach to financial health is strategic and broad. In other words, it’s integrated into everything you do. I think a lot of folks, when they talk about financial health, they talk about it like an ornament on the Christmas tree. It’s a technological doodad or some new fancy product. And we haven’t even talked about things like Erica, your digital assistant. Or life plan, the app we have. The feature in your app that you have enables people to do planning. Those are all elements, I would imagine, of this broader approach and strategy. But this has really been integrated across pretty much everything you do, it sounds like.

Holly O’Neill:
That’s exactly right. And I probably have been remiss not to talk about those capabilities. And they all definitely plug into our focus and approach. But I think you’re right. My point is more financial health. The focus on financial health is how we do business. It’s not a do-dad. It’s not a capability. It’s not one single thing. It’s about how we create the foundation and how we interact with clients in physical, and digital, and with all of our solutions. So life plan is absolutely a tremendous tool out there that we have millions of clients using, and it’s been incredibly successful. But that’s just one component of financial health is the solutions and the tools and the resources that we make available to our clients. So you’re spot. On it’s how we do business, not a single capability.

Jen Tescher:
Given that, do you think that engagement scores ultimately do enough justice, in other words, to sort of measuring the outcome you’re getting from a financial health perspective? I’m curious your point of view on the value or importance of measuring financial health and changing financial health directly, and whether that ultimately needs to factor into how an organization holds itself accountable.

Holly O’Neill:
Sure. I think it’s only one element. It’s only one element of your success in this journey. Over the long term, I do think it will show the success of what you’re doing, but there are certainly other things that we’ll look at to determine the success. We’ll look at – we talked at the beginning of this – around consumer health. We have really good indicators of consumer health in our portfolio. So that is absolutely another measure that we’ll look at. Are our consumers in our portfolio healthy? And is the education, are the solutions that we’re providing them, giving them what they need to maintain that financial health and grow on the wealth spectrum?

So another measure of success for us is, as clients come into the business and need different things, are we growing them into other segments successfully? So there are a whole variety of measures. Engagement satisfaction is only one of them. It’s good because it does give you an instant measure. And, from my perspective, having that for such a large business, 60,000 people, is really important. Because they want the immediate feedback, they know when they’ve done well, and they know when they have an opportunity for improvement, so really important.

Looking at those scores over time is also a symbol of how you’re performing, but there are definitely other measures in the way of financial health. We look at client complaints that come through the system. Where are clients not happy? That’s always a topic for us, an honest conversation, and really taking those apart and figuring out where you can do better. So there’s a lot that comes into play, but those are a few things.

Jen Tescher:
So a few minutes ago, you talked about what you’ve done with overdraft as an example of the financial health journey you’ve been on. And as you mentioned, I have been on that journey with you. Full disclosure, I’m a member of the bank’s national consumer advisory council. And I can still remember when the bank decided to stop charging overdraft fees on debit card purchases, and no one else followed suit. And you did it because it was the right thing to do as opposed to regulatory mandate. And there have been, industry-wide in the last year, have been numerous changes across many financial institutions, but I think the bank has continued to be a real leader there.

But it’s a really good example of the fact that there are trade-offs. That doing the right thing by the customer, centering the customer, isn’t always in alignment with the incentive structure of a business. At the end of the day, the bank isn’t a charity. The bank has shareholders. The bank is about making what it needs to make money. So how do you balance those things in the day-to-day? How do you ultimately make those hard decisions? Tell us a little bit more about that.

Holly O’Neill:
Yeah. So it’s a really good point. And I think, over the past decade-plus, we’ve made some very difficult decisions. I think it speaks to our culture. Honestly, that starts at the top with Brian, our CEO, and making those difficult decisions to do the right thing by the client.

It was not an overnight fix. It’s something that we undertook over a long period of time. The debit point of sale overdraft and the elimination of that, I think that was back in 2010, was certainly the first big move we made. And then we basically set down a path of what we felt would be least disruptive to the consumer as we tried to shift behavior. And it involved the evolution of our solution set with the safe balance and the essential solutions.

And then it involved changes on our end. The biggest of which we just rolled out at the beginning of this year. Which was a reduction in the overdraft fee from 35 to 10, the elimination of the balance connect fee, the elimination of the insufficient funds fee. So we put a variety of things in place because we were also sensitive to not disrupting the consumer. Because, as you and I have talked about a lot, many consumers want access to overdraft on an occasional basis. So we were focused on continuing to provide that to them while also putting them on a path to financial health and not having excessive overdrafts as an occurrence for our clients.

So it was a gradual shift, and the latest moves that we made, I think, were some of the final installments. I won’t say final because, as I said, we’re always evolving. And taking feedback by the way, and listening to clients. So as we’ve made these changes, as we rolled out safe balance, we listened to clients along the way, what they liked, what they didn’t like, and we course corrected, as most people do. So the journey’s not been super easy, because it does create behavior shifts for clients, and you want to be as least disruptive there as you can. And it created changes for the business as well.

But I go back to what we started with, which is, when you put the client first, your business will grow in the medium term and long term, regardless of what that is. So putting the client first, being responsible for the client’s behavior shifts, and the shareholder, for sure. We were balancing all of those perspectives. And I feel good with where we’ve landed, and we’ll continue to watch it and adjust as necessary.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. So you have been at this a long time. You have been at the bank, I think, your entire career, 25 years. What led you to a career in banking in the first place, and what’s kept you in it?

Holly O’Neill:
It’s a really good question. And I have now a college-age daughter who’s considering what her career is. So I was trying to reach back to understand what led me to this career. I know I wanted business; finance was really interesting to me, and having exposure and access to clients, human clients, I think attracted me. But I’ve done a variety of things at the bank. I started in our institutional business. I spent 10 years there. I spent 10 years in our global wealth business. And then I made a very dramatic move into consumer.

And at the time I made it, it was a big risk. I had never done it before. Brand new client, big scale business with 66 million clients. And I can say now, six years into the consumer bank, best decision I made in my career. I way underestimated the energy you get dealing with the consumer and having such a major impact on such a broad population of people. I love interacting. I love hearing from them. And from our teams too, by the way, in the field. So I did take a risk shifting into this business. I think a few people, including my husband, thought I was maybe a little crazy. But by far the best decision I made.

And every day, I’m starting to get out now a little bit more, since the pandemic is coming to hopefully a close or a wind-down, starting to get out more. To see the teams in the field. I was out last week and the week before. And it’s just so great to be out there, to interact with our teams who are working with our clients every day and doing a lot, walking into financial centers, listening to phone calls. And it really, it does give you energy to then go back and keep doing more and innovating and enhancing. So the consumer will always keep you on your toes and present you challenges. And I think it’s one of the reasons I’ve stayed at the company for 25 years, is there’s always been a challenge or a change. And in this space, in particular, the consumer is always shifting. So that gets you up in the morning with some good energy.

Jen Tescher:
So given that you’ve worked with clients, customers across the economic spectrum, from very wealthy to mass market and below, what are the common factors? What are the things that you learned from that first 19 years of your career, if you will, that you’ve been able to leverage as you’ve taken on the retail customer bank?

Holly O’Neill:
Sure. So there’s going to be a common theme here, but when I worked in the private bank, in global wealth, I always said to my team, “Put the client first, and everything else will fall into place.” A little easier to do when you have a smaller business with tens of thousands of clients, not 66 million clients, but it holds true here, too. And always put the client first, and then everything else falls in place. And so I use that a lot and to really think through complex issues. Because you brought up earlier, the issues are complex at times. You have a lot of perspectives. You have a lot of stakeholders. So making sure the client is front and center and then figuring out how you’re going to back into that is always how I lean, whether it’s a simple or a complex problem.

Jen Tescher:
So I do think that it is, unfortunately, unique in business, not just in banking, to lead with putting the consumer first or at the center. Lots of people will say that.

Holly O’Neill:
Right.

Jen Tescher:
And they may even have a place in their heart where they mean it, but they haven’t necessarily structured their business or their culture to make good on that. And so I’m curious, where do you get inspiration from for this approach? What other leaders inspire you to really put the consumer at the center?

Holly O’Neill:
Gosh, that’s a really good question that I’m going to have to think about for… I get inspiration from so many different groups. I’ll first start with my colleagues internally. Having such great partners across the bank is inspiring. It really is a very collegial team environment here that I face and live with every day, so feel very fortunate there. And there are a whole variety of leaders who challenge and who will back you up, and that comes from the top of the organization.

I look out at some of the technology companies, the big ones, and they’re inspiring because they have really set a high bar on how to interact with the consumer. How to make it easy. Think outside the box. Don’t think of the historical, how you’ve done it in the past. Think about where you’re going to go. And so that’s inspiring.

And when we challenge ourselves, we do often look, probably most frequently, outside of financial services. So that is inspiring. I, of course, really love Sheryl Sandberg. She’s a super inspiring female leader. I think she’s about to make a pretty big shift in her own career, which I always find inspiring. And I listen to her podcast pretty frequently, and I just, I think she really comes to it with some common sense and simple, really good and important advice that I’ve leaned on at different points of my career. So those are just a few of the things that I would call out.

Jen Tescher:
Yeah. Holly, thank you so much for joining me on Emerge Everywhere.

Holly O’Neill:
Thanks for having me, Jennifer. I really appreciate it.

Jen Tescher:
This has been Emerge Everywhere, a Financial Health Network production. If you like the show, please help spread the financial health message by leaving a review. And if you have ideas for future guests or thoughts on the show, please click on the link in the show notes to connect with us. See you next time.