Bank of America’s AI investments are bearing fruit as its operating leverage surged well above its full-year goal in the second quarter while more than 300 use cases took shape.  

The $3.5 trillion bank’s operating leverage — the percentage of revenue growth minus non-interest expense growth — was 6.6% in the second quarter and 4.7% at midyear, exceeding its target of roughly 2% heading into the year, according to the bank’s Q2 earnings presentation today.  

Bank of America raised its full-year target for operating leverage to 3% to 4% with AI playing a significant role in driving this efficiency gain, Chief Financial Officer Alastair Borthwick said during today’s earnings call.  

“AI plays a role in two ways,” he said. “The first one is on the revenue side. … We’re leading in investment banking and global markets around capital raising, financing that capital investment and infrastructure build around the world.” 

The second way is in operations as Bank of America continues to roll out productivity tools across the organization, Borthwick said, noting that the bank has approved more than 300 AI and machine learning use cases, including 114 gen AI applications that are live.  

BY THE NUMBERS: In its earnings presentation, the bank devoted a slide to AI metrics for the first time, with highlights including:

• Developers increased coding productivity by more than 20%;
• 200,000 active users of productivity tools, generating more than 400,000 prompts per day;
• More than 20,000 wealth management bankers used AI to strengthen advising capabilities;
• 4,000 corporate and investments bankers used AI for research and presentation preparation;
• 5,000 call center agents received automated recommendations; and
• More than 600,000 AI training courses completed across the organization.  

The bank also reported these AI and digital adoption results in Q2:

• Active users of Erica, its AI-driven financial assistant, reached 24.6 million, up from 20 million in Q2 2025;
• Erica interactions through the bank’s CashPro Chat, an AI tool for commercial clients, totaled 40,100, up from 37,600 a year prior;
• Active digital users rose to 50 million from 49 million in Q2 2025; and
• Digital sales accounted for 70% of total sales, up 5 percentage points year over year. 

The growth of digital sales and Erica users reflects how new AI capabilities have “improved service, increased efficiency and allowed teammates to focus on higher-value client interactions,” Borthwick said. 

Other Q2 results included:

• Revenue jumped 15.3% YoY to $31.6 billion; 
• Net income increased 26.4% YoY to $9.1 billion;
• Efficiency ratio was 59%, compared with 63% in Q2 2025; and
• Headcount totaled 211,304, down from 212,134 in Q1.  

MARKET REACTION: Shares of Bank of America [NYSE: BAC] were up 1.9% from market open to $60.62 as of market close today. It has a market capitalization of $430.2 billion.

 Register here for the FinAi Lending Summit, set for Oct. 7-8 in Las Vegas.