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When Bank of America eliminated the $20,000 balance requirement tied to its checking rewards program, roughly 30 million checking customers suddenly qualified. More than 5 million have since enrolled, and around 20,000 new customers are now opening a checking account and joining BofA Rewards each week — a rate 2.5 times higher than before the program launched.
Key insight: Shikha Narula, Head of Consumer Deposits and Rewards at Bank of America, explained on a recent episode of the Banking Transformed podcast that these results stem from a deliberate strategy shift: everyday value, easier access, and a tighter link between rewards and the overall banking relationship.
What Bankers Can Learn From BofA Rewards
- Make everyday value count. BofA Rewards delivers tangible perks to checking customers from day one, while higher tiers unlock increasingly valuable benefits as relationships grow.
- Treat digital as fulfillment, not the whole journey. Eighty percent of enrollments happen digitally, yet financial center associates are often the true catalyst behind the decision.
- Arm employees with a story worth telling. Frontline conversations turn a complex transformation into something customers understand and act on.
- Design for the entire enterprise. A program spanning deposits, lending, and investments demands coordinated infrastructure so customers experience one unified relationship.
- Measure behavior, not just sign-ups. Bank of America tracks direct deposits, transaction activity, card usage, and additional products to gauge whether rewards drive relationship primacy.
Making Rewards Relevant to Everyday Banking
Bank of America did not build its rewards strategy from zero. Its Preferred Rewards program had already spent a decade deepening customer relationships. The real challenge was making that value fit the way people bank, spend, and pay today.
“Clients expect more from their financial services provider,” Narula said. Traditional banking rewards still matter, but customers increasingly want benefits that touch more areas of their lives.
That thinking shaped BofA Rewards. Rather than reserving rewards for customers who meet a specific financial threshold, the bank created an accessible member tier that delivers value immediately. Checking customers can access merchant deals and discounts across more than 15,000 brands, including everyday names like Shell and CVS.
Checking stayed the anchor because it remains the hub of a customer’s daily financial life: receiving a paycheck, paying bills, and covering everyday purchases. But the strategic goal went further.
Key insight: By making rewards accessible from the very start of the relationship, Bank of America gave customers an immediate reason to engage while opening a path to deeper value over time.
Instead of using the entry-level experience as a mere preview of higher tiers, the bank made it meaningful on its own. At the same time, it preserved differentiation for customers with deeper ties. Benefits such as card bonuses, auto loan and mortgage discounts, subscription credits, and lifestyle perks rise as customers move up the tiers.
The bank also widened access to some premium experiences. Lifestyle benefits that once required at least $1 million in deposits and investments are now available to customers with $100,000 or more. These include curated offers, travel planning, cruise bookings, early ticket access for major concerts and sporting events, and luxury automotive discounts.
Key insight: Rather than asking what customers must do to qualify for a rewards program, ask what value it can provide at each stage of the relationship — and what additional value gives customers a reason to go deeper.
Letting Each Channel Play a Distinct Role
Enrollment is intentionally simple: existing checking customers can join BofA Rewards in two taps through the mobile app.
Yet Narula’s description of the customer journey shows why channel metrics alone tell an incomplete story. “Digital is our primary fulfillment channel,” she said, “but our associates within financial centers are the true catalyst.”
A customer might discuss broader financial goals with an associate, receive tailored recommendations, and then complete enrollment from the mobile app that same evening. As banks continue debating the role of branches versus digital, this demonstrates that institutions can assign each channel a different part of the customer journey. The mobile experience handles the transaction efficiently; the financial center provides context, explanation, and a broader conversation about financial needs.
Bank of America also redesigned the rewards experience inside its mobile app, letting customers view benefits, activate them, check their current tier, and track progression in one place. The combination gives employees something tangible to discuss while making it effortless for customers to act when ready. It also creates more opportunities to connect a seemingly simple rewards conversation with broader financial behavior — whether deciding where to keep a direct deposit, which card to use most often, or whether to move additional assets.
Key insight: Stop treating the channel where an action completes as the entire customer journey. Map where customers discover value, where they seek reassurance, where decisions are influenced, and where transactions ultimately happen. Those may be four different moments.
Tracking Behavior Beyond Enrollment
BofA Rewards also gives Bank of America a window into whether customer relationships are genuinely changing. For the deals component, Narula said engagement requires more than opening the app or browsing offers — customers must activate a deal and receive cash back from a purchase. Activity is not necessarily engagement.
The early data reflects that pattern: 45% of redemptions occur in retail, 20% in gas, and 18% in entertainment. Customers are using rewards for routine purchases rather than saving them for occasional splurges.
Beyond rewards activity, Bank of America watches signals like customers moving direct deposits to the bank, increasing debit or credit card transactions, or shifting a top-of-wallet credit card from another institution. Historically, rewards members have shown 94% primacy and 99% retention. Thirty percent of clients obtain another Bank of America product within 30 days of joining, and members carry three times higher card spend and three times higher investment balances.
Key insight: The goal is not to copy these metrics mechanically, but to establish a clear link between the behavior a loyalty strategy targets and the measures used to evaluate it. If deeper relationships are the objective, enrollment alone is a weak endpoint.
Making the Transformation Real for Employees
For Narula, one of the most important parts of launching a major transformation happens away from the technology. She has spent significant time listening to financial center associates and the conversations they have with customers, gaining a direct view into what resonates and where employees can make the program relevant.
Her advice to other executives: start those conversations early. “Invest in having those conversations with associates early enough,” Narula said. “Make sure you’re investing and educating them along the way.”
Employees ultimately translate strategy into customer experience. A program can be brilliantly designed at the executive level, but its value becomes real when a staff member can explain it clearly, answer questions, and tie it to a customer’s financial goals.
The second challenge is less visible but equally consequential: infrastructure. Narula said organizations routinely underestimate the work required to launch a program at this scale. BofA Rewards touches banking, lending, and investments, requiring product enhancements across multiple platforms. “All of it needs to come together seamlessly and be a very cohesive experience to clients,” she said.
Customers experience one relationship with the bank, while dozens of products, platforms, and teams operate underneath. The work therefore does not end at launch — leaders must keep listening, spot friction, and strengthen the connections between systems and teams.
For BofA Rewards, that work continues. Bank of America recently expanded its travel experience so customers can combine debit and credit card payments with rewards when booking, with access to more than 170 airline partners and roughly half a million properties.
Bottom line: A loyalty strategy gains real value when it becomes part of how customers bank every day, how employees talk about the relationship, and how the institution connects its products behind the scenes.
Source: thefinancialbrand.com