Bank of America Reaches 15 Million Online Banking Customers

Bank of America has continued to redefine online banking as "online financial retailing," with the company's community of online customers increasingly taking advantage of the full suite of Bank of America products and services through bankofamerica.com.

Sales of products through bankofamerica.com totaled 3.8 million in 2005, an increase of 69 percent. This included 2.3 million online activations, 380,000 new savings accounts, 375,000 new credit card accounts and 298,000 new checking accounts.

"More customers are signing up with us and buying products online because we've made security and simplicity our top priorities," said Sanjay Gupta, e- Commerce executive. "But we're not resting on our laurels. We're always looking for enhancements and listening to our customers to make their online experiences even better."

Among the improvements in the past year:

• Enhanced security. For the past two years, Javelin Strategy & Research ranked Bank of America No. 1 in its Online Banking Safety Scorecard.

• Bank of America led the industry with SiteKey(TM), a two-way authentication system that helps customers confirm they are at the real Bank of America Web site and avoid phishing scams.

• The bank announced earlier this year that it would roll out new alerts to help customers monitor accounts and detect potential fraudulent activity. Customers can receive free alerts online, by cell phone or PDAs about balances, payments, changes to sensitive passcodes and other transactions.

• Another security enhancement allows customers to use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters such as underscores, hyphens and asterisks to create an even stronger online ID and passcode. When customers sign up for online banking or decide to change their ID or passcode, they will not be able to use any portion or combination of their Social Security number or ATM/debit card number. They also won't be able to use their ATM/debit card PIN as their passcode.

• In December, the bank launched the Bank of America Toolbar, powered by EarthLink, to provide consumers another way to identify fraudulent Web sites and prevent pop-up advertisements.

• Less paper. More customers than ever are "going paperless," choosing to stop receiving a total of more than 3 million paper statements through the mail. Along with increased convenience, going paperless reduces the risk of mail fraud. Bank of America is encouraging this trend by donating $1 per account to The Nature Conservancy's "Save A Tree, Conserve a Forest" program when customers elect to stop receiving paper versions of checking or savings account statements. The total donation will be up to $500,000.

• More consumers also are receiving bills electronically. Bank of America customers received more than 6.1 million e-bills from more than 340 billers during February.

• Easier bill payment. Customers who use online bill payment can keep money in their accounts longer. With an enhancement launched earlier this year, money stays in the customer's account until the payee receives the payment, rather than when the customer sends it. Scheduling is also easier - customers simply say when the payment should be delivered. More than 7.5 million customers use Bank of America's free online bill payment, making up more than 58% of the online banking bill payers in the United States, according to comScore.

• Faster and shorter applications. Consumers can apply for a variety of products online, including checking, savings, debit cards, credit cards, home equity lines of credit and mortgage pre-approvals.

• Live chat. Bank of America has expanded secure, live text chat to help answer consumer questions about opening accounts, starting online banking and bill pay, getting credit cards, as well as applying for a mortgage or a home equity line of credit. Consumers considering mortgages and home equity lines of credit now have choices about when they would like to talk directly to an associate.

• More products. Bank of America has launched online sales of more than 300 affinity credit cards. Throughout the year, more MBNA affinity cards will be integrated into bankofamerica.com, and the cards are rolling out to Bank of America banking centers.