When Amy Cross discovered the forward thinking about gender diversity within Bank of America, she opened two accounts to show her support for the financial institution’s efforts to advance women.
“When you look at women economically, we have a massive amount of power,” said Cross, founder of the data and marketing company Gender Fair. “I want to be sure every dollar in my pocket works for women’s equality, whether it’s banking or buying a pair of Tory Burch shoes.”
In addition to partnering with the Tory Burch Foundation to connect women business owners to affordable loans, Bank of America reported an increase of 33 percent to 44 percent of women in senior leadership positions from 2015 to 2018. More than 30 percent of the bank’s directors are women.
As a result, Bank of America was among the companies honored Thurssay in New York City by the 2019 Catalyst Conference: The Future@Work.
“Within our program’s lines of business, we have a wealth management division that focuses specifically on financial advisors, and they build upon the enterprise priorities that we have,” said Lauren Hood, Bank of America's diversity and inclusion executive, who spoke on a panel at the conference along with Morgan Whitacre, the bank's head of client underwriting and protection, and Ebony A. Thomas, the bank's global talent acquisition executive.
Bank of America’s forum for financial advisors is the 6,000-member Women’s Exchange in Global Wealth & Investment Management, which helps women advisors build a network, mentor and mentee each other, develop their practice and share insights about the marketplace and other topics of interest.
Each of the group's 62 chapters holds multiple events throughout the year focused on personal and professional development, according to Bank of America spokesperson Laura I. Paredes. For example, during one event, high-performing financial advisors around the country share with other advisors how they started their business, scaled it and what they learned along the way.
“We have a long history of a lot of diverse efforts and we found it would be better to focus them so we created the Investing in Women Council, which is in five key areas, to drive the strategy in a more cohesive way,” said Whitacre.
The key areas of the Investing in Women Leadership Council, which was created five years ago, include developing talent, leader advocacy, increasing ethnic diversity, attracting and hiring and maintaining networks.
Enhanced benefits at the bank include reimbursement for adoption, egg freezing and fertility treatments, support for emotional wellness as well as time off for family bereavement, as well as assistance for employees with terminal illness, retirement, domestic violence, transgenderism, critical events and other incidents.