Bank of America earned $6.933 billion in the third quarter of 2026, down from $8.332 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. The bank put the drop on a $1.2 billion charge for a regulatory settlement announced a day before it reported. Without that charge, it says, profit would have been $8.1 billion.
The numbers come from the bank’s third-quarter earnings filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on October 14. The bank labels the figures preliminary.
A $1.2 billion penalty behind the drop
In its earnings release, Bank of America says the charge covers civil money penalties tied to consent orders with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN. The orders concern the bank’s programs for catching money laundering and sanctions violations. The charge cost the bank 17 cents a share and is not tax-deductible, the release says.
FinCEN’s own announcement put its penalty at $1.2 billion, coordinated with a $750 million penalty from the OCC. Diluted earnings per share came in at $0.91, against $1.04 a year earlier. Adjusted for the charge, the bank reports $1.08.
The charge shows up on the cost line. Noninterest expense was $19.722 billion in the quarter, compared with $17.337 billion a year ago, according to the bank’s supplemental data. The bank puts the figure at $18.5 billion without the charge.
People who keep a checking account, savings or a certificate of deposit at the bank are the ones asking what a weaker quarter means for their balances. The filings show the shortfall came from a regulatory penalty while revenue, interest income and deposits all rose over the year. What protects an account is deposit insurance, which does not depend on a bank’s quarterly profit. The details are in the section further down.
The bank calls these figures preliminary, and its full quarterly filing with the SEC is the next document due.
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Revenue and interest income rose
Revenue, net of interest expense, rose to $29.958 billion from $29.040 billion. Net interest income, the gap between what the bank earns on loans and pays on deposits, climbed to $16.449 billion from $15.233 billion, an increase of 8 percent.
Chief executive Brian Moynihan said in the release: “The team delivered organic growth, deepening client relationships and adding new ones.” Period-end deposits stood at about $2.04 trillion and loans and leases at about $1.25 trillion, per the supplemental data. Average loans have grown for ten straight quarters, the release says.
On the consumer side, the bank reports more than 200,000 net new checking accounts in the quarter, bringing the total to 38.9 million, 92 percent of them primary accounts. It counts 50 million active digital banking users and 25.7 million active users of Zelle, the bank-to-bank payment service. Consumer investment assets reached $664 billion, up 14 percent.
The consumer bank, which holds the checking and card business, earned $3.521 billion on revenue of $11.572 billion. Its average deposits were about $948.6 billion, and average credit card loans rose 5 percent to $105.8 billion from $101.0 billion. Chief financial officer Alastair Borthwick said net interest income “grew 8% from last year,” helped by a better net interest yield.
Tangible book value per common share, a measure of what each share would be worth in net assets, was $29.14 at the end of September. That compares with $29.37 at the end of June and $28.16 a year earlier. Total assets stood at $3.43 trillion, and the common share count fell from 7,018.0 million to 6,922.7 million as buybacks continued.
Trading and wealth: where the money came from
Global Markets, the bank’s trading arm, earned $1.2 billion on sales and trading revenue of $5.1 billion, down 5 percent from a year ago, the release says. Global Wealth and Investment Management earned $1.5 billion on revenue of $7.1 billion, up 13 percent. Global Banking earned $2.0 billion on $6.2 billion of revenue, roughly flat.
The bank returned $8.3 billion to shareholders in the quarter: $2.2 billion in common dividends and $6.0 billion in buybacks, according to the release.
Loan losses stayed low, capital slipped
Bad-loan costs were little changed. The provision for credit losses was $1.269 billion, compared with $1.295 billion a year earlier. The net charge-off ratio, the share of loans written off as uncollectable, was 0.44 percent. The annualized charge-off ratio on credit cards was 3.22 percent, down from 3.46 percent.
The bank set aside $14.2 billion in allowances for credit losses. Its common equity tier 1 ratio, a main measure of a bank’s capital cushion against losses, was 10.9 percent, down from 11.6 percent a year earlier. The bank’s supplementary leverage ratio was 5.5 percent.
What protects a balance at any bank
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits up to $250,000 per depositor, per insured bank, for each ownership category. Single accounts, joint accounts, retirement accounts such as IRAs and trust accounts are separate categories, so a household can be covered for more than $250,000 at one bank. The FDIC explains the rules on its deposit insurance page and offers an online estimator, EDIE, to calculate coverage.
Anyone close to the limit can list every account held at the bank, who is named on each one and what category it falls in, then run those numbers through the estimator.
The coverage is set by the account, not by the bank’s results. The next document to watch is the full quarterly report Bank of America files with the SEC, which follows these preliminary figures.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Financial Wire’s editorial team.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
