Welcome to Bank in America, the nation`s leading financial institution and home for all of your personal financial needs.Bank in America believes that environmental protection is an integral component of doing business in today`s world.Bank in America , headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina , is the largest commercial bank in the United States measured in deposits (although Citigroup has higher assets worldwide), and the third-largest company in the world by the 2006 Forbes Global 2000. On 17 July 2006, Bank of America reported second quarter 2006 net income of $5.48 billion, surpassing that of Citigroup for the first time.
Amadeo Giannini was the founder of the modern day Bank of America NT&SA. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake his Bank of Italy became a leader of the San Francisco banking community by providing loans to those struck by the disaster.
In the late 1920`s, Giannini approached Orra E. Monnette, President and founder of the Los Angeles based Bank of America, Los Angeles about a potential merger between the two entities. The Los Angeles based bank exhibited strong growth throughout the 1920s, due in part to its success in developing an advanced bank branching system. The merger of the two institutions was completed in early 1929 and took the name Bank of America. The combined company was headed by Giannini with Monnette serving as co-Chair.3
While the names of many nationally chartered banks end with the initials `N.A.` (National Association), Giannini picked a unique ending, National Trust and Savings Association, or `NT&SA`, because he wanted the name to highlight the different functions of the bank. BofA was the only NT&SA in the country. The bank was soon the largest in California.
Giannini also sought to build a national bank, expanding into most of the western states as well as into the insurance industry, under the aegis of his holding company, Transamerica Corporation. Bank of America NT&SA also had banking relationships in international financial markets. With the passage of the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, banks were prohibited from owning non-banking subsidiaries such as insurance companies, and Bank of America and Transamerica were separated, with the latter company continuing in the insurance business.
However, federal banking regulators prohibited Bank of America`s interstate banking activity, and Bank of America`s domestic banks outside of California were forced into a separate company that eventually became First Interstate Bancorp, which was acquired by Wells Fargo Corp. in 1996. It was not until the 1980s with a change in federal banking legislation and regulation that Bank of America was again able to expand its domestic consumer banking activity outside of California. California was the nation`s fastest growing state during the post-World War II boom, with the highest use of checking accounts (partially driven by many soldiers being paid via bank accounts during WWII), resulting in BankAmerica being swamped by checks. By 1949, the branches had to close at 2:00pm in order to process the bookkeeping by 5:00 p.m.
To cope with the transaction volume, the bank invested heavily in information technology and is generally credited, together with GE and SRI, with inventing modern centralized bank operations, along with a number of financial transaction processing technologies such as automatic check processing, account numbers, and Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR). Based upon these technologies, credit cards were able to be linked directly to individual bank accounts. Because of the efficiency of these technologies, the bank had significantly lower administrative costs than other banks and was able to expand until it became the world`s largest bank in the early 1970s.
In 1959, it invented the bank credit card, the BankAmericard, which changed its name to VISA in 1977. A consortium of other California banks came up with Master Charge (now MasterCard) in order to compete with BankAmericard.
