Investing in women in the workplace

We have a deep and rich history of investing in women. This history dates back to 1919 when Charlie Merrill hired Annie Grimes, the first bond saleswoman on Wall Street. Today, we are proud to have strong female representation at all levels of our organization.

Our continued investment in women is evident in the resources we have focused on bringing female talent to our company, developing our employees and supporting the economic empowerment of women across the globe.

Benefits

Woman carrying child into side door of home

Woman carrying child into side door of home

Woman carrying child into side door of home

Benefits

We offer a variety of benefits and programs designed to help women who work here manage the challenges of balancing their work and personal lives.

As part of our focus on helping our employees learn and grow, we provide a variety of resources to help you build new skills or take on new responsibilities. In the U.S., eligible employees can receive up to $5,250 per tax year in tuition reimbursement for courses that are relevant to roles at the bank.

Our industry-leading benefits include the reimbursement of eligible expenses associated with adoption and comprehensive medical support to help with fertility. With the arrival of a new child, U.S.-based employees receive 16 weeks of paid parental leave – maternity, paternity and adoption – to allow parents the opportunity to bond with their new children.

When it’s time to return to work, we support the transition by offering employees a range of family care services, which can include support for nursing mothers, back-up child care and programs to offset child care expenses.

We also know many employees care for elder and other family members. That is why we offer a range of adult care services, such as back-up adult care and access to experts to assess needs and provide senior care management and elder care law services.

“I received lots of support during my maternity leave and my return to work. Having the right internal network in place in order to facilitate my return to work made the transition that much easier. I was also promoted [to Managing Director] in the same year that I took maternity leave. I think this is a very important message to many women looking to start a family at the same time as progressing their career.”

Ashley Wallace | Managing Director, Equity Research, Global Banking & Markets, London, United Kingdom

Career development and mentoring

Providing meaningful ways for women to advance their careers is critical. Below are just a few of the innovative programs we offer to encourage career development, connection and support for our female colleagues.

Our global Employee Network, LEAD for Women has more than 29,000 memberships around the world. LEAD is dedicated to promoting professional interactions that help attract, develop, retain and advance women throughout the company.
In the U.S., our Women’s Executive Development Program leverages the faculty of Columbia Business School to engage, develop, retain and support career advancement of high potential talent. The program offers a robust 10-month experience including assessments, in-person and ongoing virtual development sessions, executive sponsorship and local market engagement opportunities to advance the participants’ careers.
Our Diverse Leaders Sponsorship program provides diverse talent with senior leaders (sponsors) to help proactively identify and promote the visibility of diverse talent.
Our Women’s Next Level Leadership Program is a seven-month virtual development experience focused on the unique challenges multicultural women face in progressing their careers and provides strategies and tactics to overcome those challenges.
In the UK, we signed the Women in Finance Charter, demonstrating our support for a government initiative to encourage greater gender balance in UK financial services. We have also heightened our efforts to recruit and develop exceptional female talent, and we offer industry-leading benefits and programs that help women to balance work and life.

Two women sitting at table and smiling

Compensation

Our focus on equal pay for equal work is designed to ensure that men and women in similar positions receive comparable pay.

Our human resources team, company leadership, and the Board of Directors have ongoing routines to monitor pay equity, and we have established robust policies and practices to help guide pay decisions that are equal for all employees – regardless of gender, race or ethnicity.

We have a thorough annual inspection process, a detailed governance framework and independent analysis by an external consulting firm that allow us to identify potential areas for adjustment. Once identified, we take action where appropriate to bring any individual employee in line with their comparable peers, thus making compensation adjustments a key part of our annual year-end process.

To further strengthen our commitment to gender pay equity, we have added a pay inquiry restriction policy as part of our hiring processes. This enhances our already strong commitment to ensuring candidates are paid based on their qualifications and the role they are applying for, not on how they have been compensated in the past.

“Do not be afraid to sit at the table, accept challenges, take risks or be assertive.

In my experience with the company, women in leadership love to serve as mentors to other women and our women’s networks are very strong. It is something that I am very proud to see. I would advise any woman who works here to seek out a mentor. If you see someone that you admire, don’t be afraid to approach her and ask.”

Jennifer F. Galvagna | Managing Director, Market Trust Executive, Bank of America Private Bank, Boston, Mass.

Leadership

We’re proud to have strong representation of women at our organization. Here, women make up more than 50% of our global workforce, more than 45% of our global management team and more than 40% of managers. Our Board of Directors is more than 30% women and we are one of only ten S&P 100 companies with five or more women on the board.

In the U.S., we partner with Paradigm for Parity℠ to improve the balance of female representation in senior leadership and client-facing roles. And in 2017 we signed the UK Women in Finance Charter, committing to improve the gender balance of our company, with an EMEA target of 28% female representation at senior levels by end of 2021.

Recognition

Awarded the 2019 Catalyst Award, recognizing companies that display innovative organizational efforts to advance women in the workplace

Recognized every year since its inception as one of the leading financial institutions on the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index

Ranked as one of Working Mother Magazine’s 100 Best Companies for the 30th consecutive year.