Steady at the Helm | Brian Moynihan with Declan Kelly

When Brian Moynihan became CEO of Bank of America in January 2010, he inherited an institution that had grown rapidly through six major acquisitions in six years in the wake of the worst financial crisis in a generation. From his first days in the role, he moved decisively to simplify what had accumulated, clearing away what no longer served the institution so its greatest strengths could be brought to bear.

What followed was fifteen years of sustained transformation, driven by the same steadiness that defined his earliest days in the role. Moynihan led a digital reinvention that changed how the bank served its clients, drove customer satisfaction to record levels, and built an institution that today looks fundamentally different from the one he inherited, while never losing sight of the purpose and obligation that guided him from the start.

In this episode of Grey Matter, Brian Moynihan sits down with Consello Founder, Chairman and CEO Declan Kelly to discuss what it means to lead an institution of that scale through successive periods of historic change, and how staying steady at the helm can shape not just how an organization survives a difficult moment, but what it becomes in the years that follow.

In this conversation, Brian discusses:

•Walking into the board with a single page outlining everything Bank of America needed to exit, and why simplification was the foundation of everything that followed
•What it means to absorb the weight of a moment so that the people around you can keep moving forward
•The moment Warren Buffett called offering $5 billion, what was behind the decision, and what it meant to the people and institution he was backing 
•How the bank's digital transformation reshaped the institution over fifteen years, and what that journey reveals about leading through change 
•The role of purpose in holding an organization together when conditions are changing faster than any strategy can anticipate

About Consello

Consello is an Advisory and Investing Platform with offices in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Dublin, Belfast, London, Barcelona, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.

Consello’s distinct advisory practices provide the complete strategic counsel today’s leaders need to grow and transform their organizations. Consello’s advisory expertise spans Corporate Advisory; M&A; Management Consulting; Talent; and Sports and Entertainment. Dedicated teams operate in each practice, led by a leadership group with deep operational experience across industries, business growth stages and market cycles and with an expansive set of global corporate relationships.

Consello’s investment business, Consello Capital, identifies high-potential mid-market companies and invests capital and expertise to transform their growth.

About Host Declan Kelly

Declan Kelly is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Consello, one of the world's most influential boutique advisory firms. A trusted advisor to dozens of CEOs leading the world's top companies, Mr. Kelly has built or run four global consulting companies over the last three decades prior to founding Consello. Mr. Kelly also served in government as US Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland during the Obama administration.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Underneath this, you had 285,000 people who came to work every day, 40, 50 million clients who depended on us, tens of thousands of businesses, trading partners, investment banking clients, and they all depended on this company being great because this was the Bank of America. It had a meaningful amount of America involved in it. And so you had to keep focused on that while you're focused on cleaning up and dealing with the issues of moment.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Welcome to Gray Matter. I'm Deccan Kelly, founder, chairman, and CEO of Cancelo. I've spent the last 30 plus years advising the CEOs who are leading the world's top companies. If there's one thing I've learned in that time, the best leaders think differently. That wiring, that gray matter, separates the truly exceptional leaders from everyone else. Understanding it is what allows us at Cancelo to help the best in the world be even better. This podcast exists because the most accomplished leaders agreed to sit down and talk about something they rarely discuss publicly, how their minds actually work. When Brian Moynihan became CEO of Bank of America, the country was still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis. Bank of America, with hundreds of thousands of employees and millions of clients, stood at the center of it all. Chosen to lead was Moynihan, a lawyer from Ohio who had worked his way through nearly every division of the firm. His first act was to refocus the business on what it did best. Over the 15 years that followed, he led a digital reinvention that fundamentally changed how the bank served its clients, drove customer satisfaction to record levels, and built an institution that today looks fundamentally different from the one he inherited. Through it all, his steadiness and clear sense of purpose turned one of the most pressured moments in American banking into one of its most consequential periods of transformation. This is Gray Matter. Brian Moynihan, welcome to Gray Matter. That's great to be here. Declan, good to see you. Thanks for taking the time. I was just in your office a little while ago. Thank you for showing me around. And I noticed in the office there is a picture of Churchill. And I couldn't help but think, without comparing you to Churchill, that both of you are models in overcoming adversity and doing things that people thought were not possible to do. What's the relationship with Churchill? What are your thoughts about him? And I know you're a student of history.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

I'm a student of American history. I spent a lot of time studying early America, but um that that picture was actually given to me by a teammate who said, you know, as we are think of like 2013-14, we sort of had moved through a lot of work after the financial crisis to clean up the company. He said, you know, you you're again not comparing you to a person who you know was defending uh Britain to the ants degree in World War II or anything like that, or but basically saying, you know, you're my memory because you can stay calm in times of stress, you th focus on the objectives, etc. And so he gave it to me. He said, you know, put this in your office. And a lot of people think that I put that in my office, actually, I put it up on the wall because the fellow gave it to me. As I think about learn more about Churchill, the admiration is he he wasn't always perfect. He made some mistakes, his ability to engage with people, his ability to think bottom-up. But there are great lines. One of the things that we do is we do a lot with the arts. And one of the great lines attributed to Churchill in the hide the bombing when the red box came in from the exchequer and people said, Why are we funding the arts? He said, Well, if we're not going to fund the arts, what are we fighting for? And so I've used that to say how important the arts are in times of stress, whether it was in the post-financial crisis or uh during COVID and other things. You got to keep funding the arts. But that showed the well-roundedness of his thought process, which is it's about society, not about winning a battle. It's about a greater good and a common wheel and a way to have allies come together and defeat evil, uh, not about, you know, a single a single battle, a single airplane, a single bomb and stuff. So he was remarkable that way.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

When people ask me about you, I always say two or three things. One, honesty, two, low ego, and three, an ability to make things that are very complicated, very simple. I think it exemplified itself through the the way that you were appointed on the first of January in 2010 and walked in to handle what was a very, very, very difficult situation. Most people 15 years ago don't remember that. What was it like for you?

SPEAKER_01 4:11

Well, uh the the key was is underneath this, you had 285,000 people who came to work every day. You have 40, 50 million clients who depended on us, tens of thousands of businesses, trading partners, investment banking clients, corporate money. And they all depended on this company being great because this was the Bank of America. It was represented, it had a meaningful amount of America involved in it. And so you had to keep focused on that while you're focused on cleaning up and dealing with the issues of the moment. So I think the you know, when that man of leadership drops on your shoulder saying you you have this 200-plus-year-old institution, you have this institution that carries in its hands the lives of so many people, you know, that's really a weighty matter. On the other hand, you have a talented team and you say, let's get to work and let's be pragmatic. We got to solve A before we solve B, before we solve C. We can't be figured out the theoretical, we have to be figured out the focused on the pragmatic. And so it it was it was an honor to take over the leadership. It was an honor to have a team that I knew we could depend on. But the big honor was to say, you know, 285,000 people, you know, we can do great things. Let's just go do them and then clean away the crap and and go on.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Grew up in Ohio, sixth of eighth, kid, eight kids. Your dad was a scientist at DuPont, your mom was a homemaker who went back to work at 55. And uh, you know, having grown up in an Irish family, you know, being sixth of eight can't have been easy, but also you learned a lot that made you who you are as a person. What was it like? What was your childhood like growing up? And I know your brothers are doctors and you're committed to Haiti and Africa and all the things you've done as a family.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

They're a group of talented people, um, my parents and my uh brothers and sisters. They, you know, it was a it was a big family, but it was close, and then you we didn't have a lot extra stuff, so we all took vacations together, got 10 people in the station wagon, drove up to the lake, so to speak, and things like that. It but it was intellectually challenging. I mean, believe me, if you weren't exactly right, you you got called out, and other people were very confident they were right. So you, if you knew they were wrong, you had to artfully figure out how to convince them of that fact, um, about facts, not about opinions, but about facts. So it was good. It was a lot of fun. You could always get a game going of something because whether it was a board game or a card game or a sports uh game, and when they brought you know, relatives or friends or whatever, you always had a crowd. So it was used to be around a lot of people. I never slept in my own room till I was like 22, probably. Uh and you know, I always had even when everybody moved out except for one brother of mine, he moved in with me because he was afraid to be alone, type of thing. So it was a great upbringing, but it was very uh, you know, intellectually rigorous and uh and we did everything, we paid the house ourselves and stuff like that, but it was intellectually rigorous because they were also analytically science-oriented. When I grew up, my grandfather was a lawyer, and so um, and he was a small town lawyer in upstate New York town called Batavia. He became a judge and he was that kind of lawyer, so he did everything and then saw everything as a judge. Uh my dad's dad was a banker, and my mom's uh my dad's mom was a banker, and they both worked in the same bank, which we now own. It's kind of an interesting story. So he was the cashier treasurer, and she was a teller, and and my so they worked in small towns, but I always grew up thinking I was a lawyer. But I thought I was gonna be a lawyer like Efflee Bailey was at the time defending this or in in the great, you know, sort of criminal law out in the 70s, and Perry Mason was on TV, and that that's what a lawyer was. And then I then I went to practice law and I became a corporate lawyer because there wasn't a lot of opportunity to defend criminals uh in big law firms, and I needed to get a job in a big law firm east to make some money, pay off my debts. But um, and so I changed to corporate law more out of pragmatism and the people who I worked with I liked in the corporate side. But it was the intellectual training, the rigor of being a lawyer, the discipline, um, the appreciation of uh precision of word, precision of writing, to have an intellectual argument to get to an answer, being able to challenge that you're wrong or right. Law puts that in your brain, no matter what. And and you know, many people in business were lawyer lawyers. I haven't practiced nine years, it was a little different. A lot of people just went into business. But that they all look back and say that training I got for the intellectual curiosity thinking. And by the way, when a teacher says you got it wrong, it just hammers you. That sort of, okay, I got to be able to defend my turf is a very good training.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I remember reading somewhere about Terry Murray at Fleet when you decided to go there and you said that meeting sort of changed your life. You're one of very few people who have pivoted from the law to becoming a CEO of a big bank, if not the only one. How difficult was it?

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I'd gone to province to practice law and got married to my wife, who is also a lawyer. I'd become a partner, you know, I'm making some decent money. We have our first child. You know, we're living uh by the house, the things that you do at 30 years old. And then I have I'm working a lot with this client called Fleet that Terry runs and a fellow named Jay Sarles, and Bill Mutterpro is a general counsel. And you know, Terry comes, uh, told Bill Mutterpro to come talk to me. And he said to Bill, he's too smart to be a lawyer. Why don't you get him in here and we'll have him do something else? It was luck. And you got to have a return on luck. You got to make a decision. So there I am making good money, have a kid, have a house. I didn't know what would I be worth a darn on this other side. I knew what I was going to do because I worked with that client, but you you had no idea whether you could make that transition from crashing off with a small group of people to where you'd start managing people. You just had to take the risk. Everybody gets the chances, and I was honored that Terry asked me to do it. And I started that transition to managing people started with people who were like me, 25, you know, MBAs, business school, business-oriented people doing models and MA and acquisitions and merger integration. And but then it moved to large groups of people. That that transaction is actually bigger. It's easy to manage very intellectually driven people because they all sort of feel, you know, the same. When you start to manage people who have different motivations, different ages, you know, people twice your age, you know, that that's where you st have to start to really think about the science of management.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

When you were offered the opportunity to go and run Bank for America, I read somewhere that you went and met the board and brought one page with you at the end of the day that you handed them and said, This is my strategy for the bank. What was on that page and how much of it actually came true? And uh who on earth goes into a job that big and hands them one page and pulls it off?

SPEAKER_01 10:20

Yeah, well, I think there are there are two parts to the one page. They knew you you knew the company, because you know, frank and I'd run different divisions that have been around for a while. Um But the real question the board had to assess is could you did you know what to do and could you get after it fast enough? And yeah, a bit a bit the discussion with them was we have this list of stuff we have to get out of so the the good stuff can shine through, and we have to do both at once. And the lit the page you're talking about is all the things I said that weren't core to what we did, that it just come accumulated. Remember from 200 uh three fall, when they when Bank of America uh uh announced the deal for Fleet Boston to January 1, 2009, the day we closed Merrill. We did U.S. Trust, LaSalle Bank, Merrill Lynch, Fleet Boston, MBA, countrywide. Just think of how much stuff came in. And so channeling that that one place of paper was we got to get out of all this because it's hurting, uh holding us back, and we got to focus on this. And you know, the board saw it, and they chose me literally uh 16 years ago. But we came out guns blare and we knew exactly. So we chopped and channeled this and then took off on that. And and it took a little while because quite frankly, you know, the rules got changed around us by uh a new administration started saying, well, let's reinvent what really happened and hold you accountable for stuff we shouldn't have been held accountable for. That's water of the dam. And you couldn't f we had to get through that, but as we came out of that, but it was the with the board, it was really we have this great assets. We have to simplify it and run those. And and those have to start being successful day one, even though all this other stuff will be the discussion for why.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

People forget because it was so long ago, 15 years a lifetime in our world now. But you know, dealing with countrywide, dealing with the whole Merrill Lynch acquisition, dealing with all the things you had to do. I remember one of the people on the House Investigations Committee said, I'm not sure you're the right guy to be leading this bank. Well, he was proven right, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_01 12:08

He said one more said one more direct up in that. And I actually subsequent to that, um, he became a fan because of the work we did in the mortgages in uh Prince Ann County, whatever it was in Maryland. And he he but he lit me up in the in in uh towns and in uh RFL, they lit me up and they lit me up in a way because they wanted to focus our anger on a company. I happen to be the only person we had two directors and a former employee. I was a person there. That's a lesson. So a lot of people said if you're you know you testified in front of Congress. I said they did it before I was CEO. And uh, and so I got a chance to do it one extra time, then my peers because I did it once before I CEO, and then I've done it CEO. You just had to keep your eye on 285,000 people, millions of clients, top talent, top businesses across all the different dimensions. It's all there. We just have to get all that behind us. And you know, it was a it was an interesting trail because people remember countrywide, but that wasn't the issue in 2008. It was Merrill had a hold of its balance sheet, and we had to tell them we were gonna do the deal. And you know, the Fed got mad at us. The Fed said they're gonna fire everybody unless you do the deal, and we're gonna remove the board management. All these things that people think only have happened, you know, recently. That that all happened. They told us they had this, they basically said you got to change the whole board out. And it's on the board members state, and they changed out. You know, that happened in 09 and under my predecessor, and ultimately you left in the at the end of that year. But, you know, there was just massive change. I mean, we we were fighting through the countrywide and mortgage and other issues really didn't become more present until you got into 2010-11 when the delinquencies and things and the uh foreclosures and modifications and all the programs people tried to put in to mitigate the hurt to individual consumers. Um, that was really later. People forget there's a lot more stuff with Lehman and Merrill and and uh and all the different stuff going on in 08 and 09 that we also had to deal with.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Our mutual friend Tom Brady often talks about, you know, in moments of epic importance, how he's able to still his mind and silence and focus and go into a bubble. Take us into your mind at the time. To be you, when you're alone in that moment, when you go home at night, when you have to think about the extremity of what you're dealing with, how was it like to be you just at that moment? Two things.

SPEAKER_01 14:11

One, watching Tom for years, and uh as a Patriots fan, I watched a lot of T uh Tom's success. And you see that in him and other people. The ability that in times when you should be speeding up to slow down. Right. And oh you know, what he talks about and what other people talked about him and what you even observe is it seems like the whole game's going slow motion, him and everybody else is running frenetically around him. And I think that aspect, that's to keep calm and carry on from Churchill. I mean it's it's the same motive. And so the point I've always said is you can waste a lot of energy running around circles, or you can sit there and and pull down and you at times of stress, whether it's that kind of stress or whether it's the stress of other types of activity. Management's job is to be a sponge, to absorb the energy, absorb the emotion, and just hold it. Not to explain people you ought to feel better, not to explain you ought to feel different because you're not that's not right. They that's what they feel. You have to be able to absorb that. And then the second thing is you have to be like a duck on a pond, going across smoothly across the top, underneath your frenetic and doing stuff. You can never show that because everybody's looking to you to say, well, if he's worried, if the manager team's worried, shouldn't we be worried? So you have to calm the place down, and then you have to be true to the purpose of the group. And so in the middle of the mess, I get lots of books sent to me. A book came in and it was, you know, leading for purpose and times of things. And so you open up and like all good business books, you can kind of read the first chapter or two and get it. And you know, you said, you know, that's a simple statement. We have to tell people why we're here. Why do so we had to make sure that people focused on why we're here, not what to do, because why we're here we keep them going, even though the what could be changing and have a frenetic pace. So that ability to calm, to try to be calm, and people often say that about our manager team and me, that you know, this stuff. And it's not because uh you you sat there and studied it, it has to a bit be natural and it has to be the way you think about problems is how do you how do you bring the energy down and then get stuff done, and then you can bring the energy up for success as opposed to having the energy be about the problem.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

But you really do focus on as a person and also in here's how you run the bank today, this low-to-zero ego approach. I know hundreds of people who work here and work for you. Every single one of them says the same thing. When you introduced the philosophy and the doctrine of responsible growth to fix the company, that was at the center of it, right? Your sort of no-nonsense philosophy.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

It's not about the ego, it's about the only way to be successful is to take advantage of the power we have for the 200,000 plus people, not any one of them. There's nothing I can do to lift this company or do something. There's something I can do to help 280,000 people do it, and they can help each other and they can help like so it's it's it's an operational necessity when you're in large-scale organizations, but it's also that you have the beauty of a scrum, it's that eight people coming together that you literally lift their weight off the ground. And it's because of that they're as a team. If any one person gives a little bit, the whole thing goes apart and people get hurt, frankly. And so it's just a miracle thing. So it's not about supporting your ego or something like that. We all have egos, we all want to be successful and stuff. It's more about the only way to get things done is to activate the collective energy at a level that you can't imagine.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

Speaking of that, I think people remember endorsements back in the day, and then we'll talk about the present and the future. Back in the day, Buffett showed up and said, I want to invest in this company. He's not an altruist, he's a hard-nosed investor. But at the end of the day, that was a massive vote of confidence in you. May not have felt it like it at the time, but at the end of the day, the sustained investment that he's had in the company and all the various different things that he said about you and the leadership, smartest investor in the history of the world. That must have been gratifying as a vote of confidence by everybody in you and the leadership team.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah. No, it it at that time the US was uh getting down great as the first time. The debt uh wouldn't know that the government was shutting down, a debt ceiling, all these things were going on. The US was out of money, literally. Um, the you know, the stock markets were getting banged around, we were getting banged around, specifically because of the litigation risk, which was not near what people said, and et cetera, et cetera. And he called me up and said, I you know, I want to put five billionaire company. I said, Well, we don't need the money because I know that I wouldn't be calling. What you need is a vote of confidence. And we we knew that. We agreed with that. And that's why we did the deal with him was as much about the confidence than the capital. The capital was something, but the confidence, the fact that that investor uh said, I will put this money in, and literally in 24 hours later, we had the deal was done. 285,000 people came back to work the next day and said, The smartest investor in the world believes this company has a lot of upside. Let's go to work. And at$5 and whatever we were at that time to now, you could have bought the common that day and you would have made as much money as he did. Every time we got a per urge stock, it got dividends. But in fact, he bought the common stock at a 20% premium. So if you bought the common that day, you you did fabulously well. And it was just an injection of confidence. And from then on, we've gone from I think we were$570 at the time,$5.70 a share, and today we're 55-ish. So it's been okay for him and okay for the shareholder. But it was about confidence. And he he's a great investor, and you know, it's yeah, at 95, you know, haven't seen him recently. He's, you know, as curious as intellectual driven, still wants another, you know, another big deal. And he always says, Bring me an elephant, bring me something big. That's what he challenges for. But um, but he it's he's been a great support for our company. But it came from that observation this is the best uh uh country, the best bank, the best position. It's gonna work. It may be bumpy and they need confidence, and here it is. That's what he's told me he did. And then on the other hand, we looked at it and we actually had now did he came to us, uh we didn't outreach to him, but believe me, when he came, we had thought about the question. And and so we the board we went like that, and the next morning we we signed a deal with it. He called 11 o'clock and by eight o'clock the next morning the deal was done.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

When you think about the transformation of the bank, I think one of the things that again you haven't talked a lot about, but you have talked about in your investor day and all the other things that you've done recently, the digital transformation of this institution has been quite extraordinary. Yet you're a person who is as predictable as a Swiss clock in the fundamentals of the business and somewhat of a traditionalist, I would say, because you you never veer from those principles as we just talked about. The world is changing so quickly with AI and everything else. Um, you know, the digital AI assistant, everything else that you've done. Where do you see all this going in the future of banking and future of Bank of America as it relates to transformation digitally?

SPEAKER_01 20:35

We had the notions in 2011 and 12 that we would end up with a lot less branches, a lot less people, and a lot more customers, and it'd all be driven by digital. And but that notion comes from 10 or 15 years of practice built up at that time and even back to uh you know, computer banking and dial-up internet and everything in 30 years. So you saw it coming, but what you really saw is the customers were adopting at a rate. And so from 2010 and now, we have half as many people working in consumer business in the business is probably twice or three times bigger. And the numbers of transactions are through the roof, and the customer scores are up you know by 20 points on a you know on a top two point scale and the and the employee scores. So and the churn in the business is way, way down, and the net growth is a lot higher. So it all worked. If I said to people this is all what's going to happen, you know, first of all, other people would catch on earlier and be able to imitate it. And secondly, it would have sounds kind of fanciful. And so that's the principles you have to run it, which is you every day you're driving against a very strategic, you know, out there view, driven by a lot of talent teammates that come up with it, not me, it's uh their job. But what you're doing is driving reliance. So if you think about what AI does is it allows a company to change another step that wasn't possible. So if you look at uh that work and you said 285,000 people to 203,000 people at the low point, and then you back up to about 213. When that first Chunk, you went down all those people. Then you invested a lot more in relationship managers and people in the front line and computer programmers developing more technology faster. So the actual headcount related to operations and the consumer and stuff kept coming down during that time. It's just you're investing faster. What you won't see is did you use some tool to change the legal department dramatically? Did you use some tool to change the finance team dramatically? Did you use some tool to change the audit team dramatically? And the answer is no, because the tools, yes, you're always applying models in machine learning and operational process simplification, all this stuff. But what you didn't have is something that can help people think faster. And that's what AI does. And so what we've seen is our audit team has already applied it, and they've been able to build a prompt library, and that prompt library can help them start audits faster, and they know they can reduce their headcount. So now we have a tool that will approach other parts of the company differently, which is fabulous. But it still has to have people, it still has to be right, the data has to be right, the process has to be right, the controls have to be right. It's a lot harder than people think. Every said, well, I just go on Chat GPT or I just go on all the other models and I do some search and it comes up with an answer. I said, Yeah, but you're not making a determination whether a person's gonna financially be able to fulfill their dreams and own a house or not. You're not actually making the decision about whether this trading position's gonna work out or not. So you if if if you're taking that kind of risk, you have to be a lot more perfectly right. That means the data has to be perfect. That's three billion dollars we spend. That means your operational process has to be understood. That's the process and the uh the work we have with 30,000 controls have to, and then you figure how to engineer the process. And so that's why it's gonna be slower. Is it unbelievably different? Yes, because it applies to different places. Is it gonna take longer? Yes. Then there's a whole nother question about how consumers are gonna use it for their day-to-day lives, which we'll be adapting to over time. That's a second order because frankly, consumers are much slower changing than people think. But this gives the consumer a tool to interface with people through an agent that they didn't have before. So now everybody has we have Erica, which is a virtual assistant for people. Now every person has their own virtual assistant. How that interfaces to a company, that's gonna be an interesting question. So there's a lot of work to do. It's got a potential that no other technology so far has had, but I'm sure we said that about every technology has come up, honestly. The predictions that, you know, how this work or that work, there won't be any work, we'll all be sitting around like Bacchus and and and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm not sure any of that's true, but the reality is that it will have a profound impact. But the question has got to be done right. And the minute you make a mistake, you've got to go back to score rolling. That's that's what people we have to think about, what we challenge ourselves. So we have to get it done right. And it has to be perfect in the other side because people won't tolerate imperfections when it comes to what we're doing with them. They will tolerate it if the turnpaper reference is not quite right. That may not be the best thing for your son or something like that. But it it's not a life or death thing. You know, get turned papers wrong in the old days, you know. It's just but the question is if I turn down the homeowner or I or make a mistake and we lose a billion dollars on something, that those are real issues that we've got to make sure we don't do.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

You're a huge proponent and advocate for the the right and appropriate level of regulation, and you've been, you know, very vocal on that topic. And obviously, having lived through 2008 and all the things that we talked about earlier. Do you feel like there's ever a possibility that we could ever have a problem like that again? Do you feel like the markets are now completely regulated in a way that is appropriate as a fail-safe?

SPEAKER_01 25:29

The best thing that came out of all that, and uh Terry Murray used to have a phrase, people enjoy it too much, and that's what started happening to regulation, they just enjoyed it too much. They kept saying, Well, let's do more because it felt good to do that. You're saying, but if you solve the problem, why are you doing more? And that's that's where the balance got out. And then it's all right, it's coming back. And by the way, that's U.S., that's the EU, that's and yep, that's everywhere in the world, UK. This all went and you could understand it from the people in there. The only way to say it would never happen again is just to keep tightening, tightening, tightening. The problem with that is you are impacting society and economic growth and success and business success and your ability to compete in the world, because not everybody's doing that. And so the level unlevel playing field, the people who have more state-owned participation as the Chinese banks in the financial services system, so they don't care as much about some of the stuff. It's all interesting. So we gotta play it. What came out of the financial crisis are three things that are just uh wholly different but aren't permanently different. One is people outside the tank were under the tent. So people forget that countrywide, uh Bear Stearns, Lehman, uh even Wa uh Wamu, these were not in the core regulatory framework. Now everybody is. So Goldman's a bank holding company, just like we are, and Morgan Stanley and JP, you know. So we're all thinking that's one thing. So they said everybody that does does this has to be in it. There's a lesson that when you start to think about uh cybercurrencies and dollar uh stable coins is wait a second, if it's locks like a duck, it is a duck. So one is everybody got in the same tent. Then they could see the liquidity and and things like that. Number two was that everybody had the same set of rules and had to have adequate capital and had to be sort of tangible common code. And the third is the stress testing. So for the American public, the thing I'd say is look at the stress test. Every year they run a stress test, and what that stress test assumes is it's 10% unemployment tomorrow, um, that the stock market goes down 40%, housing prices go down 50%, real estate commercial real estate is down 60%. And we throw all the banks in that with no preparation and act like they can't make adjustments, which we always do. And let's see how they look, and they pass it. That that's different than in 2006 when none of that was done. That is the major difference because you're saying assume that we hit a pothole of immense proportions, tomorrow that happens. And then in our companies, behind that, we build a stress testing regime that we all do. Now, that's not perfect because there's stuff outside our system. That's not perfect because the way they they their outcomes, they say this happens, how you get there might have a different impact than you think. So that's why we have to be very mindful of even the risk beyond that. But but I'd say those three things the the fact that everybody's on their tents, they can see the industry, see the financial services industry better than they could before. The second is the core capital levels are twice as high, to make it simple, even before the excess of nature of them. And the third is a stress test and gives you sort of an objective proof point that throw everybody in, let some let the teacher grade it. We don't, it's not like we have a lot of influence on how that comes out. We don't agree with the results, they're kind of wacky sometimes, but we're bound by them. And and that's good, that's that's good for the industry. By the way, that goes on in other countries too.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

So where do you see Bank of America 10 years from now? When you think and look forward with all the different changes that you've seen and overseen, you've seen lifetimes of changes in 15 years and the speed that you just talked about. What's your hope and dream for the institution in in the next decade?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

And the other day we'll be more international because of the globalness of despite deglobalization and everything, large companies operate all over the world. They may have to operate differently than they'd like to because of tariffs and trade or factory locations or data locations, but they're operating everywhere. So we're we're more global every year. The second thing I think then, you know, we'll we'll be the dominant player and we'll be have gone organically a larger size across the US and the businesses we're in. And the third is we'll we'll be a lot more digitally, you know, whatever words you want to use, but it'll be a lot more technology is a higher percentage of the place. But what won't be different? Customer first, what won't be different, focused on teammates and customer scores. What won't be different is supporting our communities. It won't be different is delivering, you know, good, strong returns to our equity holders on a very consistent through-the-cycle basis. That can't be different because then you don't have a great company. So the brand will be better, but the brand can't be better at the derogation of making money. We can't make money and have teammates that are not happy with us. So handling all this change that will go on in people's psychology and in reality, in terms of the way the work processes flow, is one of the big challenges we have as a management team. So it'll be a bigger version of what we have today, a little more global, a lot more technology driving the bus and products and services. You know, I can't think of. But at the end of the day, it'll still be based on a customer, a client, a company, an investor, a large investor, a consumer, you know, serving their financial needs and doing it a way that you keep building trust. Because if you don't have that trust, you won't be here.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

You've invested a huge amount in the brand. You've spent uh billions of dollars making sure that consumers really understand who you are. You're involved in the Olympics, the World Cup, you know, golf, all kinds of things, obviously as a business, marathons, etc. I know that giving back is a huge part of your life. You've lived it outside of the bank as well, personally. Do you think that it's looking forward that most institutions are going to be able to keep that at the center of what they do? Because in this world that we're living in right now, it does appear to be something that we're losing a little bit as a society. And I know it's been core to your whole value system that you bring to bear here.

SPEAKER_01 30:50

I I think capitalism done the right way never goes out of style. You know, which is You got to do it for the benefit of the shareholder and the benefit of the customer. You gotta do it for the benefit of the shareholder and the benefit of the teammate. Because in the end of the day, we are a company that has 213,000 talented individuals, the computers they work with every day, the ability to keep them dry, and that wonderful customer base. So if those teammates aren't fired up in in great shape, and we're investing in their training and development, uh, their curiosity or flexibility, you know, we're not gonna be able to serve the customers. It's not like so you have to make sure all it's in balance. I don't think that goes out of style. I think that's a principle that's been written about many years, talked about, but also you see play out. People can express it in the ability to have a brand live on long. Our communities need our support. If you go back, the start of this company was basically 1784, it's the oldest part of it. Revere, Hancock, Adams. They started this bank because they needed it, collect the uh assets and the deposits in the community, assets of the people, liabilities of the bank, and then lend them out to people who grow their businesses and have success. That's what we do. You know, we help customers be successful by taking other customers of excess assets and deploying them for for the people who need those assets to grow faster and run their business. There's not there's can never be anything wrong with that. And so I think the idea of share of privacy, not primary, all this stuff gets argued about at a given moment. But if you don't do capitalism right, you will not have a customer base at the end. If you don't do capitalism right, you won't have an employee base. If you don't do capital rights, your long-term shareholders value will start to deteriorate. That that's the principle on. So it's not about a political position, not about it's about how to run the business the right way. Going back, especially in banking, which is different than some other things. You know, on the end of the day, we are a creature of all the all the markets we serve and how we serve them, and that's why we focus very locally and how we drive it. So we have this big international brand and they have this big, you know, global presence. But when you get down to it, how we operate Nashville to 90% of the people there. Yes, there's some multinational companies that would think about other things, but to 90% of our customers by count, it's how we operate locally. And do our people carry the brand and do a great job? Do we have great products and services? Or are we thinking about it from the community to us? That's why you have to do both. And it's a it's an and, not an or.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

The kid who grew up in Ohio in that house teaming with eight kids and all the things you said, and you know, the upbringing that you had and all the various things that you had going through your life. Did you ever think that you'd find yourself in this position? And also, what advice would the Brian Moynen of today give to the Brian Moynen of 30 years ago?

SPEAKER_01 33:18

You could never imagine you'd be here today because like I said, I I grew up thinking I first I'd be a professional football player that right at the height and weight and other types of dimensions. Then I thought I'd be a uh, you know, a criminal lawyer and that ran into practicalities, uh, et cetera. So I never dreamed about this and and uh you know it never would have thought I'd done this. And so, you know, it but I think that comes the second question, which is the best advice I give to people, stay curious, keep learning, keep thinking. Uh um, because in the end of the day, your your ability to think and be curious and learn more is what's going to make you successful. And it might be learning about the science of management, it might be learning about uh uh the you know the Greeks in the trading book, it might be learning about uh wealth management, uh, how to construct portfolios. It could be all that, but you have to keep learning about life. And then you have to learn about other stuff that affects that in a way that you don't think. And so if you're stop being curious, that's the mistake. And then the second point we talked about a little earlier, which is always take the chance when you get a a break, when you get lucky. Think about how to take that chance, um, which requires you to have a flexibility that you never do. I mean, I literally was out of a job in December 2008. The press release was going out because I eliminated my own job in a merger integration, saying we got to get rid of people, my job should go away. They flipped around and I stayed in the company. And a year later I'm CEO. Think about that. 12 months, I go from literally the press release on its way out the door. That has to do with being a little bit flexible and putting up, but it was the right answer to get rid of my job at the time. We need to get rid of expense. So the idea that I'm gonna, when young kids ask me, how do I go from, you know, should I go to law school, be CEO? I said it's irrelevant. You should go to law school if you want to go to law school. You know, uh, you should go to business school if you want to go to business school. Then after that, you'll figure it out. And the second thing is I always say if you try to plan your life out into your increments for, you know, 25 years of working, you'll be disappointed 24 of them. So just let it come at you, learn, show you it can do good work, show you can do hard work hard at it, show you can think about it, show you can add value to what the the enterprise needs, and let then be flexible when times come up. You have to, yeah, there was no logical thing you could put down the scorecard that said stop being a part youngest partner ever in the law firm and go join a company in an area you knew not that you had never worked in, but it was felt right and it was the right thing to do, and you then got the return on luck. And from that, from there to here was a direct line.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

This section of the show was called the Uncharted Path. Okay. Best piece of advice you ever got in your life?

SPEAKER_01 35:49

To uh be curious, just keep learning.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Who would you say was the biggest mentor in life and gave you the best advice and you reflected on it and acted on it?

SPEAKER_01 35:59

The simplest piece of advice was when I was in constitutional law, and the professor said, you know, basically treat everybody like you'd like to be treated yourself. From a business sense, um you have Terry Murray and the successive CEOs had Chad Gifford and then Ken Lewis and Hugh McCall and others. They've all one piece of advice wouldn't suffice. Watching them, listen to them, having them talk to you is always important. So what you need is to absorb experienced people's advice from everybody, including you, and and then process it and figure out what it means to you. It's dangerous to say somebody gave me a piece of advice because frankly, a lot of people gave me piece of advice as much of her double.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

How important is being Irish to you?

SPEAKER_01 36:33

It's it's important. Um, you know, it's you know, it's our heritage, it's who we came from. I've learned more about it, frankly, uh over the years. And I I think it's been wonderful learning about the country. Uh, you know, having played rugby, you got a little bit of experience uh there. I played rugby in Dublin. I also played rugby in Belfast. Um I played against the collegians in 19, say, 87 or 88, right when the accords are being voted upon and crossing the border when it was fortified. It's it's you know, I think that just it's important because it's part of who we are. And uh, but I'm also part German, I'm part of other things, but it it bec it's just such a persona uh that the world has about Irish people that it it that always is something to talk about and learn about.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

What's one or two things about you that most people would never know, don't realize?

SPEAKER_01 37:19

The funny thing is after 15 years of doing things like this, there's not much left. People found out things along the way they didn't know. But look, at the end of the day, you know, I think the the hidden thing that I have that I'd like to read like, you know, spy novels and stuff like that, to which you know, a lot of people say, Don't you read more of intellectual stuff than that? And I said, No, these are fun. So I read them for fun and I I spend, you know, so whether it's uh Badachu, whether it's Kenfollow, whether it's you know you pick it, it's just good stuff.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

If you could have done one other thing, other than being a lawyer and being a banker and all the things you've done, which are obviously extraordinary. When you were growing up, apart from being a football pair, a rugby pair, what would it have been?

SPEAKER_01 37:53

An architect. An architect. My brother is one. I I don't have the artistic talent, but I think the the idea of thinking of this building coming out from nothing and the design and stuff, and it the idea of of you know the engineering precision with the artistry, I just don't have the talent, but I admire architecture almost as much as anything I do.

SPEAKER_00 38:09

I know your brothers are doctors and you come from a very, you know, giving family, and you've been closely involved in Haiti and Africa and other things. Talk a little bit about that because I know it's early in your life and it's lived all the way through.

SPEAKER_01 38:26

Yeah. I've tried to get involved in personally things where I should have an impact. And so the project in Haiti came about where the thing was kind of coming apart, and they they asked me to join a board and raise some money and get it going and guide it. Literally, we ran the thing for a while, and then my brother ended up running and did a wonderful job, and he still runs it today. Um, but yeah, but it was they could have an impact. So a school, 30 kids in a class developing that, and now 25, 30, 30 years later, probably now you've got kids that graduated, have gone on to be you know, lawyers and doctors and business people in Haiti and the leaders of the country. But that's my goal, whether it was youth build in Boston or whether it was this. I, you know, I was always, if I was going to be on something, National Museum of African American History Culture helping to raise the money to get, I always wanted to be on things you could actually have a personal impact on. You know, we as a company support a lot of things. I could be on a lot of boards, but it has to be something I think I can actually add value to.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

One piece of advice you got that you rejected and then said, I'm so glad I didn't take that piece of advice.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Well, the advice I always got is you you're surrounding yourself by young people and they do what you say. They always reject it because the end of the day I I have had a lot of smart young people around, they beat the crap out of me. And so it looked like they were always doing what I said on the surface, they were actually behind the scenes saying, You are dumb, you don't understand this, and they were just unabashed in your opinions. And so, especially as you get more senior, you know, you need to have people who will speak truth to power, as the saying goes. And that tends to come from people who don't know better. But I had people around, well, you need to get a lot of you know, people my age now around you, so you you know, if you because you're a little brash or a little thing, and I you know, I I reject it then and I still reject it. You have to understand young people are gonna challenge people and they're gonna be irreverent, and they're gonna be a little funny, and they're gonna be a little off putting, off-center, and stuff, but that's all good.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Thank you, man. Thank you. I really appreciate everything. Good to see you. Thank you very much.