Bank of America Corp Essay

Bank of America Corporation supplies banking and non-banking financial services and products to individual customers and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the form of retail banking, larger corporations and government of the United States and even to international arena. The bank generates the savings accounts, money market savings accounts, checking accounts from the deposits segment. The Global Card services segment allows the US consumers with business cards, consumer lending and international debit card services. The Home Loans and Insurance segment offers it consumers with products and services related to real estate such as mortgage and home equity loans. The Global banking segment gives commercial loans, leasing, short-term loans, capital management and treasury solutions. The Global Markets solution provides advisory services, custody services and securities clearing. The bank’s Global Wealth and Investment Management segment caters to estate management, brokerage services, credit and banking expertise. The profit margin for the bank was 7. 05 percent in the past year. Bank of America has a $1. 5 trillion goal for community development lending focusing on affordable housing, SMEs, consumer financing and economic development in general. Global Consumer and Small Business Banking is the largest segment of the bank and focuses mostly on credit card issuance and consumer banking. This division has over 6200 retail branches and over 18700 ATMs over the US. The bank is also a member of Global ATM alliance- initiative taken by many banks to that enable the customers to use the ATM or check card with no fees. The organization also supplies its employees to buy hybrid vehicles and has an eco-friendly tower in Manhattan and even gives mortgage loan breaks to consumers whose homes pass as being energy efficient. The bank has even donated money for the health centers in Massachusetts and to the homeless shelters in Miami. JP Morgan Chase and Company: JP Morgan Chase provides a variety of financial services across the globe. There is the Investment bank segment for corporate strategy and structure, capital raising in equity and debt markets, risk management and provides the financial institutions, governments and corporations with institutional investors. There is Commercial banking segment that does lending, treasury services, cash management, trade and whole sale cards to SMEs and multinational companies. The Asset management segment provides wealth and investment management services to institutions as well as retail investors. Global investment management in equities, real estate, hedge funds, fixed income, money market instruments and banking deposits are also offered by the bank. The company has Retail financing services segment that caters to retail banking for the consumer through checking and savings accounts, mortgages, home equity and business loans and online banking and telephone banking. The Card Services segment provides the credit cards and keeps track of the credit payments processes. The profit margin for the latest fiscal year has been 19. 52 percent. Its consumer functions involve more than 3000 branches, 8500 ATMs and 270 mortgage offices. JP Morgan and Chase fared well compared to its peer in the credit crunch of 2007 and even though investment banking unit suffered and the bank even increased its loan reserves losses by $4. 3 billion. And even then the net income of the bank was 25 percent due to the growth in strong earnings of the bank’s credit card and commercial banking units. After the survival of the bank in such a tough scenario it has proven the effectiveness with which it has been offering the diverse array of financial services businesses. Citigroup and Inc: The company has two distinct segments: Citicorp and Citi Holdings. Citicorp is the global bank for the businesses plus the consumers and is divided into two main businesses namely: Regional consumer banking and institutional clients group. The regional consumer banking provides the conventional services of retail banking, cards and commercial banking on small-scale in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Catering to the securities and banking services such as investment banking, advisory services, lending, debt and equity sales, foreign exchange, institutional brokerage and treasury and trade solutions is the institutional clients group. Whereas the segment Citi Holdings has three businesses to look at: brokerage and asset management, local consumer lending and special asset pool. The brokerage and asset management division in a joint venture with Morgan and Stanley and provides retail brokerage and asset management services. The local consumer lending provides mortgage loans, personal loans, student loans, commercial real estate loans and even western European card. The special asset pool is a portfolio of securities, loans and other assets. The profit margin for the latest year has been negative 0. 84 percent. Citigroup is the sixteenth largest political campaign donator in the US according to Centre for Responsive politics. Citigroup even obtained naming rights as Citi Field to the home ballpark of the New Major League Baseball team in 2009. Recommendation: After research of the three banks, Citigroup has been the one to be involved in many scandals; ranging from financing Enron and alleged money laundering facilitation and even conducting biased research on the customers. Citigroup even disrupted the European bond market by selling a large amount of bonds and then buying them back a cheaper price. The organization has also been alleged of stealing money from its customers especially the poor and the recently deceased with an improper â€Å"sweep† feature in its computers. Hence it can be said that Citigroup has to go a long way in clearing its image with the consumers because now with the internet, they’re aware of everything and already Citigroup faces a lot of competition from its competitors. Reference: Winkler, Rolfe (August 21, 2009). â€Å"Big banks still hold regulators hostage†. Reuters, via Forbes. com (Retrieved August 21, 2010)