About Bank of America
Bank of America, commonly referred to as BOA, is one of the largest banks in the world, offering a variety of services for their customers. The Charlotte, North Carolina, based bank was founded in its current incarnation in 1998, when NationsBank acquired BankAmerica, forming the modern Bank of America. BOA offers services to numerous and varied customers. From multibillion dollar loans to hedge funds, to smaller loans for houses, cars, and education, for regular Americans, to savings and checking accounts for consumers around the world, BOA is a massive company in the financial sector. Specifically, the checking and savings accounts offered by BOA can be a great choice for individuals attempting to determine what bank will suit their needs best.
Checking Accounts
Bank of America offers many different unique advantages for their customers while opening a checking account. Students, specifically, can get a great advantage, as BOA will waive monthly maintenance fees for any high school or college student up to the age of 24. Students can end up saving themselves a lot of money by opening their checking account with Bank of America, as the monthly maintenance fee for Bank of America Core Checking Account is $12 per month. If a student opened a BOA checking account at the age of 18, and remained a student until the age of 22, they would save $576 in fees over the four years. This might not seem like a lot to older, more financially established customers, but for students looking to maximize their pocket money in college, even $20 can seem like a fortune! A Bank of America Core Checking Account can be opened for only $25, making very affordable to begin banking with BOA.
Another aspect to consider when deciding whether or not to open a BOA checking account, is Bank of America’s excellent fraud and theft protection for checking accounts. Bank of America has a $0 Liability Guarantee, ensuring that any transactions made in the first 24 hours of a customers’ debit card being stolen is credited back to their account. Additionally, customers can lock their debit card at will, all from the Bank of America Mobile Banking app. This handy feature can let account holders suspend all purchases from a debit card in the event that their debit card is lost or stolen.
Savings Account
Bank of America also offers a variety of useful services and benefits for opening a savings account. Customers will get to increase their interest rate with Bank of America as their account grows and their relationship with BOA progresses and matures. Most national banks offer around a 0.01% annual percentage yield (APY) on average, but with BOA, customers can eventually get as much as a 0.06% APY, with Platinum Honors Tier. While the 0.05% difference may not seem like much, the interest generated by a 0.01% APY account and a 0.06% APY account, each with $100,000 in them, would be a $5,000 per year difference! Additionally, customers can link their checking and savings accounts at BOA to establish overdraft protection, allowing their savings account to pay off debit card transactions in the event that their checking account does not have suitable funds for price of the transaction. Overdraft protection insulates BOA customers from an additional overdraft fee, in the event that their checking account runs out of the money required for a purchase.
It only costs $100 to open a Bank of America Reward Savings Account. This $100 will grant a potential customer a variety of advantages that come along with banking at BOA. First and foremost, customers gain access to the BOA Mobile Banking app, which allows them to quickly manage their finances from anywhere in the world that has an internet connection. The Mobile Banking app is considered one of the most up to speed and modern mobile banking system, and for those customers who are concerned with being able to access their finances from their phone, this might a major factor to consider.
Additionally, customers gain access to BankAmerideals, discounts with various well known businesses, such as Five Guys, Starbucks, and Staples. Coupon-savvy customers of BOA will be able to save themselves money while shopping or dining at BOA’s partners with the BankAmerideals program. Generally, the program will offer customers discounts of around 5-10% at various businesses, and the deals will be redeemable for about one month. For those customers looking to create ways to save money, Bank of America also offers the Keep the Change program with customers’ debit cards. When a BOA customer who has enabled the Keep the Change program makes a purchase with their debit card, the purchase will be rounded up to the nearest dollar, and deposited into the customer’s Reward Savings Account. The Keep the Change program is an excellent way for people who have trouble contributing to their savings account on a regular basis to make savings deposits without having to think about it.
Additional Advantages
One more major advantage for any potential customer of BOA is their massive size and scale across the country. In almost any place in America, a BOA customer will be able to go to a close Bank of America branch or find an ATM. While there are many other banks of similar size, such as Chase or Wells Fargo, the advantage of having banks all around the country can not be understated, especially for those customers who travel to different domestic locations frequently.
Whether a Bank of America customer is in New York, Chicago, Denver, or Los Angeles, they can be comfortable knowing that they can quickly get to a BOA branch or find an ATM. Many smaller banks, like Frost Bank in Texas, or Bank of the West in the Rocky Mountains, are localized to their region, making it a painful experience for their customers to access their accounts and money while travelling in another area of the country; Bank of America has definitely eliminated this concern for its customers.
Disadvantages
As discussed above, Bank of America customers get access to a wide variety of different benefits when using BOA to bank. However, there might be certain aspects of the BOA experience that customers do not like. Firstly, for those customers who use credit cards to make most of their daily purchases, the process for setting up a bill pay with BOA is complicated and often frustrating. Many customers are often forced to go through an account transfer to pay their credit card bill manually, taking significant time and attention compared to many other online banking options, such as Navy Federal who has a much more streamlined bill pay system.
Additionally, for those customers looking to maximize their APY for their savings account, Bank of America’s APY rates are generally on the low side. While BOA offers competitive APY rates compared to many other large, national banks, smaller banks, like Ally, Barclays, and Synchrony offer far higher APY rates for their customers. Potential BOA customers who prefer to keep large amounts of cash in their savings account will find they are not getting the maximum amount of interest they could be getting from other, smaller banks.
Fees
Bank of America charges a variety of fees, staying competitive with many larger national banks. As mentioned previously, BOA charges $12 per month for maintenance on checking accounts, exempting students. Bank of America customers can avoid a monthly fee on their savings account if they either: maintain a balance of $500 or more, link a Bank of America Interest Checking or Rewards Savings account, or if they are a Preferred Rewards client. If none of these conditions are met, the monthly fee for a BOA checking account is $8.
The overdraft fee is $35 per item charged when there is no money within the checking account. This particular fee makes overdraft protection very useful for BOA customers, as they can avoid nasty penalties for overdrafting using a debit card. Bank of America also has a $35 non-sufficient fund fee, or NSF fee. NSF means that a checking account does not have the funds necessary
Conclusion
Overall, Bank of America carries many unique advantages for its clients, in both checking and savings accounts. Advantages like saving on fees for students, the BankAmerideals program, overdraft protection, the Keep the Change program, and the large number of BOA branches around the country easily outweigh disadvantages like a lower savings account APY and an occasionally frustrating mobile bill pay system.
However, a consumer looking into what bank they should open checking and savings accounts with should be sure to analyze their own needs from a bank, and determine whether or not a large, national bank like BOA meets these needs. Bank of America has a storied history of success in the banking industry, and meets the banking needs of millions of Americans on a daily basis; if a potential customer decides that BOA is the bank for them, there is no doubt that a meaningful banking relationship can be developed, for years to come.
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