While revenues in the wealth and investment management division also dropped from a year earlier, expenses did not, with the bank increasing its army of wealth advisers for the sixth consecutive quarter to 18,037. Across the bank, headcount dropped about 15,000 from a year earlier, to 215,000, as it continued to wind down a portfolio of about $29bn of unwanted assets carried over from the financial crisis while making further cuts to the retail branch network. The results show that while BofA has put much of the trauma of the crisis behind it — beating analysts’ quarterly profit forecasts for the fourth period in a row — it is still struggling to generate growth in an environment of low interest rates and patchy capital markets activity.

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