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Bank of America, N.A.

Lender or loan platform

PPP
Type
Company or group
Role
Lender or loan platform
Programs
PPP
Updated

The profile

The PPP's biggest lender by count, with 491,034 loans for $34.4 billion, and the bank whose prepaid cards carried California's jobless benefits. Two regulators fined it $225 million over the cards.

  • Type: National bank; PPP lender; issuer of state unemployment-benefit debit cards
  • Parent: Bank of America Corporation

In the archive

Bank of America, N.A. made more Paycheck Protection Program loans than any other lender: 491,034, for $34.4 billion, in the SBA's loan-level file.1 Priced one loan at a time under the SBA's fee rules, that book carries about $1.49 billion in lender processing fees, second to JPMorgan Chase.12 The bank has not published what it received. It also issued the prepaid debit cards that paid California's unemployment benefits. In July 2022 it agreed to pay $225 million in penalties to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over how it handled them.34

PPP lending

The bank opened its PPP portal on April 3, 2020, to business customers who already had a borrowing relationship with it, and the next day widened the gate to checking customers with no business credit at another bank.5 In the program's first two weeks the SBA approved 9,056 of its loans, for $3.63 billion.1 Most of its lending came after the program got new money on April 27. The bank's May 4, 2020 release reported 265,500 approvals, "More than 256,000" of them since the reopening.6 Three of every four of its loans were for $50,000 or less; the 15,324 loans above $350,000 were 3.1 percent of the count and 43.3 percent of the dollars.1 The numbers are on its lender page.

The SBA, not the borrower, paid the lender: 5 percent on 2020 loans up to $350,000, 3 percent up to $2 million and 1 percent above that.2 For 2021 loans of $50,000 or less the fee became the lesser of 50 percent of the loan or $2,500.7 The bank capitalized the fees and recognized them "as interest income" over the loans' lives.8 Forgiveness sped that up: its 2021 annual report credits "the acceleration of net capitalized loan fees due to PPP loan forgiveness" for part of a $231 million rise in Consumer Banking's net interest income.9

On May 4, 2020, before the SBA had paid it anything, the bank announced "that net proceeds related to PPP fees will be dedicated to support small businesses and the communities and nonprofits we serve."6 A year later chief executive Brian Moynihan told the Senate Banking Committee the bank would "have a final assessment of total fees received once all loans have been processed."10 We found that assessment in no filing. The fee arithmetic, and what the bank did and did not disclose, is in How Much Did Bank of America Make From Pandemic Relief?

Sued over the line and the fees

Profiles, Inc., a Baltimore public-relations firm, sued on April 3, 2020, the day the portal opened, for businesses "prevented from even applying for a PPP loan by BOA solely because they do not have a pre-existing debt relationship with BOA."11 On April 13 Judge Stephanie Gallagher denied a temporary restraining order: "Plaintiffs fail to demonstrate that the CARES Act provides a private right of action."5 In San Francisco, two small businesses alleged that their applications waited while larger ones went first; in January 2021 Judge Vince Chhabria sent their claims against the bank to arbitration under their deposit agreements.12 The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation refused to combine the Bank of America PPP cases, citing "individualized factual issues concerning the circumstances of each loan application."13 The Banks Served Their Own Customers First, and Courts Shrugged covers those suits.

Accountants and consultants who helped borrowers apply sued for a share of the fee. In December 2020 Judge Jon Tigar held that "the CARES Act and the SBA Rule do not require lenders to pay agent fees for assistance with PPP loan applications, except as required under a written compensation agreement."14 The panel also refused to centralize the agent-fee suits, in which Bank of America was a defendant.15 The Agents Got Nothing follows them.

A House Select Subcommittee staff report found in October 2020 that Bank of America, unlike JPMorgan and PNC, processed applications "without substantial timing discrepancies across the business lines," and that it "pointed to Regulation B as a reason for not collecting demographic information from PPP applicants."16 The Subcommittee's findings carry no penalty.

California's unemployment cards

California's Employment Development Department paid jobless benefits onto Bank of America prepaid debit cards. When fraud claims surged in 2020, the bank screened cardholders' reports of unauthorized transactions with an automated filter. The CFPB found that the bank froze accounts and denied error claims "based solely on the results of Respondent's automated Fraud Filter," and that before switching the filter on in September 2020 it "knew, or should have known," that the filter would sometimes get it wrong.4 On July 14, 2022 the bank consented to a $100 million CFPB penalty, with redress to cardholders, and a $125 million OCC civil money penalty, without admitting or denying the CFPB's findings.43

Cardholders had already sued. In May 2021 Judge Chhabria found a "strong likelihood of success" on claims that the bank was failing to investigate reported charges and was "often simply freezing cardholder accounts based on a faulty screening process"; a preliminary injunction followed on June 2, 2021.1718 The suits were consolidated in the Southern District of California as In re Bank of America California Unemployment Benefits Litigation, No. 3:21-md-02992. On June 16, 2025 the court certified five classes of cardholders, among them a claim-denial class and an account-freeze class, under the Electronic Fund Transfer Act.19 The bank's 2021 annual report says its role in pandemic programs "has also resulted and will continue to result in losses, including from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the processing of unemployment benefits for California and certain other states."9 The Filter That Froze California tells that part.

Since 2025

In May 2026 the court reset a mandatory settlement conference in the unemployment-card case before the magistrate judge.20 We found no settlement, and no regulatory action over the bank's PPP lending.

Sources

Notes

  1. SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data, release of Sept. 30, 2024, loans with Bank of America, N.A. as originating lender; counts and modeled fees as computed on the lender page. Original: SBA PPP FOIA loan-level data (original: data.sba.gov · stored capture) ↩
  2. SBA interim final rule, Paycheck Protection Program, 85 FR 20811 (Apr. 15, 2020). ↩
  3. OCC order for a civil money penalty, Bank of America, N.A., AA-ENF-2022-22 (July 14, 2022). ↩
  4. CFPB consent order, In the Matter of Bank of America, N.A., 2022-CFPB-0004 (July 14, 2022). ↩
  5. Memorandum opinion denying a temporary restraining order, Profiles, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp., No. SAG-20-0894 (D. Md. Apr. 13, 2020), pp. 2–3 and 7. Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.480878/gov.uscourts.mdd.480878.17.0.pdf ↩
  6. Bank of America press release on 265,500 PPP loans (May 4, 2020). Original: https://newsroom.bankofamerica.com/content/newsroom/press-releases/2020/05/bank-of-america-receives-approval-for-265-500-sba-paycheck-prote.html ↩
  7. SBA interim final rule, 86 FR 3692 (Jan. 14, 2021). Original: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-01-14/html/2021-00451.htm PPP Interim Final Rule Jan 14, 2021, 86 FR 3692 / FR Doc 2021-00451 (stored capture) ↩
  8. Bank of America Form 10-Q for the quarter ended Sept. 30, 2020. Original: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000007085820000071/bac-20200930.htm ↩
  9. Bank of America Form 10-K for 2021. Original: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/70858/000007085822000062/bac-20211231.htm ↩
  10. Written testimony of Brian Moynihan, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (May 26, 2021), pp. 4–5. Original: https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/MoynihanTestimony%205-26-21.pdf ↩
  11. Class action complaint, Profiles, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp. (D. Md. Apr. 3, 2020), para. 42. Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.480878/gov.uscourts.mdd.480878.1.0.pdf ↩
  12. Order, Informatech Consulting v. Bank of America Corp., No. 3:20-cv-02892-VC (N.D. Cal. Jan. 25, 2021), Doc. 72. Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.358740/gov.uscourts.cand.358740.72.0.pdf ↩
  13. Order denying transfer, In re: Bank of America Paycheck Protection Program Litigation, MDL No. 2952 (J.P.M.L. Aug. 5, 2020). Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.jpml.1161489/gov.uscourts.jpml.1161489.47.0.pdf ↩
  14. Order granting motion to dismiss, Lopez v. Bank of America, N.A., No. 4:20-cv-04172-JST (N.D. Cal. Dec. 4, 2020), Doc. 43, p. 15. Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.361409/gov.uscourts.cand.361409.43.0.pdf ↩
  15. Order denying transfer, In re Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Agent Fees Litigation, MDL No. 2950 (J.P.M.L. Aug. 5, 2020). Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.jpml.1161172/gov.uscourts.jpml.1161172.356.0.pdf ↩
  16. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, staff report, "Underserved and Unprotected" (Oct. 2020), pp. 10 and 14. ↩
  17. Order regarding preliminary injunction, Yick v. Bank of America, N.A., No. 21-cv-00376-VC (N.D. Cal. May 17, 2021), Doc. 89. Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.372027/gov.uscourts.cand.372027.89.0.pdf ↩
  18. Preliminary injunction, Yick v. Bank of America, N.A. (N.D. Cal. June 2, 2021). Original: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.372027/gov.uscourts.cand.372027.103.0.pdf ↩
  19. Order granting class certification, In re Bank of America California Unemployment Benefits Litigation, No. 3:21-md-02992 (S.D. Cal. June 16, 2025), Doc. 499. Original: https://ecf.casd.uscourts.gov/doc1/037121439114 ↩
  20. Order resetting mandatory settlement conference, In re Bank of America California Unemployment Benefits Litigation (S.D. Cal.), Doc. 712. Original: https://ecf.casd.uscourts.gov/doc1/037122344307 ↩
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