Half a million of Bank of America Corp.’s 66 million customers have deferred loan payments because of financial fallout from the coronavirus.
“The idea is to defer the payment, defer the impact,” Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan said in an interview Friday on CNBC. “We’re working with our customers who need help, who are losing their jobs. We have to preserve their ability to have cash flow.”
The bank’s portal for small-business relief loans went live Friday morning and already had 10,000 applications, he said. The Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender is prioritizing 1 million of its existing small-business borrowers, he said.
Read more: BofA prepares for deluge of small-business loan applications
Separately, Moynihan said only 5% of trading employees are working from the bank’s offices.
— By Lananh Nguyen (Bloomberg)
