Bank of America folds fintech investment banking team into tech

Fintech and software payments are bound to intersect as financial technology begins to resemble traditional technology such as software, senior official of the bank says

BANK of America has folded its fintech investment banking team into its technology practice, reflecting the industry-wide shift in financial services towards software.

The bank is moving about 50 bankers into its roughly 200-strong tech group, said Kevin Brunner, the bank’s chairman of global mergers and acquisitions, and global head of technology, media and telecom investment banking.

Fintech is a catch-all term for more than a dozen types of financial-oriented tech companies, including payments providers, stock exchanges, online brokers, data sellers, portfolio-management software makers and digital-lending platforms.

While the way banks cover those businesses varies from company to company, they usually fall within financial services, given how closely intertwined banking has been with classic fintech areas such as payments.

That has been changing as financial technology begins to resemble traditional technology, particularly software, Brunner said last week at Bank of America’s Tech Innovation Summit in San Francisco.

“Fintech payments and software are bound to intersect,” he added. Fintech companies also have similar financial profiles to software companies, so it makes sense to have them covered by the same group.

The organisational change-up comes amid Brunner’s recent appointment to run technology, media and telecom banking, after serving as co-head of global mergers and acquisitions. BLOOMBERG