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2 Responses to “Thursday Headlines: BofA looks at further expense cuts”
The huge opportunity for BofA is to reduce staffing in branches – particularly tellers. They have something like 100,000 tellers, but more importantly, they hire and train 65,000 tellers each year. There is a big decrease in all the HR related functions that support tellers – staffing, onboarding, training, supervision, benefits, etc. You’re probably looking at an expense reduction of $50,000 annual savings per teller FTE reduced.
Tom, this is no reflection on BofA, but in general, we are seeing some credit disturbance coming in the next 12-18 months. This perception is as a result of the recommendation by Congress & the administration for softer regulatory oversight coupled with the activities of many regional and community banks to take additional risk to increase loan production. These two factors appear to be leading to marginal to poor practices in accepting less credit worthy borrowers, easing the requirements of proper terms & covenants & cutting corners to accept less than satisfactory standards.
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