Bank of America Corp. is conducting a job search for 3 executives who would improve its retail online and mobile-banking services.  Chicago-based recruiter Heidrick & Struggles has been retained to find someone to head business development, another to manage sales, and a third to craft online and mobile strategy.  Experienced managers at rival banks have been interviewed. 

It's common knowledge that financial firms are pushing deeper into services such as banking by smartphones and increased electronic payments.  At the same time, Bank of America needs to cut costs - which means closing branches because U.S. curbs on overdraft and debit-card fees could cut annual revenue by about $2 billion.

"Banks are obviously under tremendous stress from loss of fee income," said Robert Hunt, senior research director for banking at Needham, MA-based advisory firm TowerGroup.  He added, "we really are starting to have a lot of customers that aren’t going to visit branches, period."

[C-I Note:  So might that mean that BofA would next look to online brokerage and, say, try to acquire E*Trade?]

        The three new positions ... will report to David Owen, who's responsible for BofA's online and mobile accounts, as well as its fraud department.  He, in turn, reports to Katy Knox, head of consumer distribution - ho in turn reports to Joseph Price, president of consumer banking.

For further details, go to:   [Bloomberg, 4/5]