Bank of America : Launches Employee Training to Focus on Customers’ Key Life Stages

As part of its customer-focused strategy to drive responsible growth, Bank of America is changing how its employees work with clients, based on personalized needs at each stage of their lives. To foster deeper relationship-building, the bank has launched Lifestage Navigation, a learning curriculum that will help employees personalize each client's experience by focusing on six key life stages: early adulthood, parenting, caregiving, retirement, widowhood, and end of life/legacy. These key life stages were identified through input from more than 50,000 survey respondents.

Through The Academy for Consumer and Small Business, tens of thousands of the bank's employees across the U.S. will participate in a curriculum developed in partnership with Age Wave under the leadership of Founder and CEO Dr. Ken Dychtwald. The learning course was created from the output of studies and survey data with more than 70,000 hours of work by dozens of researchers, behavioral finance experts, psychologists, economists and instructional designers. The nine-hour curriculum uses groundbreaking and proprietary insights, empathy training, and a spectrum of techniques to help employees better relate to and uncover specific planning needs unique to each client, and will become part of the core elements of the overall training program for employees.

'Our business is based on client relationships, and through Lifestage Navigation training, our employees will gain a deeper understanding and heightened empathy for the events that shape our clients' lives,' said John Jordan, head of The Academy for Consumer and Small Business. 'By transforming how our workforce interacts with clients, we will be far better at creating and deepening long-term relationships with our clients and customers.'

'We set out several years ago to create a truly client-centric training program for financial professionals that focused on people, not products. The era of one-size-fits-all is over: a couple expecting their first child has an entirely different spectrum of hopes and fears than the newly retired about to relocate to the lifestyle of their dreams,' said Dr. Ken Dychtwald. 'Through the Lifestage Navigation learning program, Bank of America employees will learn how to provide their clients customized attention and care to help them plan for and meet their needs at every stage of life.'

Age Wave
Age Wave is the nation's foremost thought leader on population demographics and aging and the related lifestyle, business, financial, health care, workforce, and cultural implications. Since its inception in 1986, under the leadership of Founder and CEO Dr. Ken Dychtwald, Age Wave has provided breakthrough research, compelling presentations, award-winning communications, education and training systems, and results-driven marketing and consulting initiatives to over half the Fortune 500. For more information, please visit www.agewave.com. (Age Wave is not affiliated with Bank of America Corporation.)

Bank of America
Bank of America is one of the world's leading financial institutions, serving individual consumers, small and middle-market businesses and large corporations with a full range of banking, investing, asset management and other financial and risk management products and services. The company provides unmatched convenience in the United States, serving approximately 67 million consumer and small business clients with approximately 4,400 retail financial centers, approximately 16,100 ATMs, and award-winning digital banking with more than 36 million active users, including nearly 26 million mobile users. Bank of America is a global leader in wealth management, corporate and investment banking and trading across a broad range of asset classes, serving corporations, governments, institutions and individuals around the world. Bank of America offers industry-leading support to approximately 3 million small business owners through a suite of innovative, easy-to-use online products and services. The company serves clients through operations across the United States, its territories and more than 35 countries. Bank of America Corporation stock (NYSE: BAC) is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Reporters May Contact:
Andy Aldridge, Bank of America, 1.980.387.0514
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