Kenneth D. Lewis
Position: Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America
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Background: Lewis joined NCNB (predecessor to NationsBank and Bank of America) in 1969 as a credit analyst in Charlotte, N.C., and served as corporate banking officer and western area director before being named manager of NCNB’s International Banking Corp. in 1977. Lewis was named president of the company’s Florida bank in 1986, and from 1988 to 1990 he served as president of the company’s Texas bank. Lewis was president of consumer and commercial banking before being named president and chief operating officer in 1999 and was named chairman, CEO and president of Bank of America in 2001. In 2002, Lewis was recognized as Banker of the Year by American Banker and as Top Chief Executive Officer by U.S. Banker.
Education: Bachelor’s degree in finance from Georgia State University; graduate of the executive program at Stanford University
Residence: North Carolina
Age: 57
PBN: You were effusive in your keynote address at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce dinner on Nov. 22 in praising the leadership in Rhode Island. How have they been successful in reaching out to Bank of America?
LEWIS: Everybody, as I said – the congressional delegation, the mayor … (but) I think I wouldn’t do justice if I didn’t say the governor really took a leadership role. And we were very impressed by the fact that he said, ‘I’ve been through this and I understand that with acquisitions there are ebbs and flows and you can’t predict by month exactly what’s going to happen.’ That’s what we were saying. And so that was the first thing. He made an outreach and then brought others along. And he talked in big-business language at the same time.
PBN: You can’t get through a merger like this without shedding some jobs. What else should Rhode Island expect?
LEWIS: We’ve been reluctant to talk about state-by-state or city-by-city because we’re looking at New England in a broad sense. I think though, if you want to look at it in a broad sense, the areas where you have huge concentrations of top level staff will be the hardest hit. We said that early on. You don’t need two chief financial officers, you don’t need two heads of risk management and of course that was more Boston than anywhere else. We’ve done some things to mitigate that as we’ve headquartered our welcome investment management group. Then if there are large operation centers where there may be synergies then you can look there as well. But we also did some tweaking of staffing models with our branches and changing the mix. After that, there will be some things that will be more in the ‘tweaking’ description. Most of the big stuff is either been identified and being done or has already been done. And so now we’re looking for more opportunities to increase employment. We’ve talked about what’s happened, the 900 new jobs (planned for a new call center in East Providence). In fact, I heard as I got in last night that we’d hired the manager. So it’s actually already started in terms of hiring and we hope to be done by June or next summer.
PBN: Nonprofits are worried about the number of banks in the state shrinking and their donations disappearing as well. How does B of A plan to give back to the community?
LEWIS: We made an unprecedented pledge and it came in two forms. One, we committed $750 billion for low- to moderate-income communities. And then we did something as an addition to that that’s never been done before – we made a $1.5 billion, 10-year commitment to philanthropy. That’s a 40 percent increase over the combined budgets of the old Bank of America and Fleet. The two companies will make more money now, and as a result of being more profitable, we will give a lot more away. We say this and we really mean this because, one, it’s the right thing to do, and two, it’s in our enlightened self-interest. We will not fly as a bank if our communities don’t fly. So we need to lend money to consumers, small businesses, and medium-sized companies. And we need to participate with the leadership of people. That’s why we have a better bit than I don’t think a lot of companies have – two hours of paid leave a week per employee to volunteer in the community. And then we’ll give a lot of money away.
PBN: What did Fleet do well here?
LEWIS: I think the philosophy of participating in the community. We think we can do something differently and better, but only incrementally. There was a philosophy of giving back to the community, of taking leadership in the community – all of the community as opposed to one segment. One of the great things about this merger is that we can bring a broader product line and more resources. But we didn’t have to change a culture or philosophy. It’s the best of all worlds.
PBN: Rhode Islanders want their bankers to know them personally. Is that a service Bank of America is prepared to deliver?
LEWIS: I recognize that. You can see it just in the contact I’ve had with the congressional delegation – it is different. We like that. I plan to continue the personal relationship I have, and also with the people here we’re going to try and keep stability and the continuity. We plan to continue that. We like the ability to have more contact with consumers.
PBN: You’ve said this has been one of the fastest, smoothest mergers in which you’ve ever participated. What has made that possible?
LEWIS: The thing we saw that we felt the market did not see – and thus the reason we paid the premium we did – was Fleet had already begun doing some things around the customer that we had done several years ago. There was a lot of work around process improvement that we knew would translate into a lot of good things. And so we find ourselves in an extraordinary transition where we are able to talk about increased momentum in net new account growth. Customer satisfaction scores are going up during the transition. I’m not sure in the history of American banking a company’s been able to do that.
PBN: Why do you think it has happened here?
LEWIS: I think there was momentum already here at Fleet. We had the benefit of having started two or three years earlier. So we knew what we had done right and what we had done wrong. For instance, we recommended early on that we have free checking. We said drop the $5.95 charge and there will be a very quick payback because of the momentum of the amount of business you do with new customers.
