IMGCAP(1)]
Bank of America Corp. is backing away from a much-publicized decision to add annual fees to some existing accounts, though the issuer is not abandoning the concept completely. "There are no plans or no strategy next year for a rollout necessarily; it's just something we're continuing to look at," says Andy Rowe, BofA strategy executive for global card services. BofA made headlines in October when it informed what it called a very small percentage of its cardholders–0.5%–that it was adding an annual fee of $29 to $99 to their accounts. The affected customers (or at least those who did not opt out and closed their accounts) will start paying the fees next year. The decision led to something of a consumer backlash, even beyond the affected cardholder population. "We've received more calls from customers on this topic who were not included in this test than on those who were in the test," Rowe says. Despite the consumer backlash over BofA's annual fees, Rowe called the test valuable. By adding annual fees to some accounts, he says, the issuer hoped to see what type of customer would pay such a fee, and for what kind of products. The $2.25 trillion-asset Charlotte, N.C.-based company applied the fee to "a variety of customers who had different value propositions with us," to see "what were they willing to pay for," Rowe says. "Were they willing to pay an annual fee to keep that, or change to a nonfee product? … That fair-value exchange, that's what we're trying to figure out from the test."
