Our commitment
Bank of America’s Business Continuity and Operational Resiliency (BCOR) Program is an enterprise-wide framework designed to help the firm anticipate, withstand, respond to and recover from business disruptions. Potential disruptions can vary from localized outages to severe enterprise-level events, caused by weather events, technology issues, pandemics, geopolitical events, terrorism and other threats.
Our Program ensures critical business functions, services, technology, data, infrastructure, and third-party services are assessed, prioritized, tested, maintained, and supported with strategies to mitigate impact and enable timely recovery.
Regulatory alignment
The BCOR Program is governed by a corporate policy which is reviewed and approved annually by the Board of Directors, and it aligns globally with all applicable laws, regulations and industry standards.
Scope
Our firm requires all businesses to develop, maintain and routinely test continuity plans to allow for continued operations of critical functions—such as order entry, securities transactions and access to cash—while prioritizing the safety of clients, customers and employees. The Program supports this requirement by evaluating enterprise readiness, safeguarding critical employee accounting capabilities and equipping leaders with resiliency plans designed to accelerate the recovery of essential business functions and technology.
Access to funds and securities
Nearly all market-traded securities are held electronically at central depositories or custodian banks (e.g., the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) to ensure liquidity and asset security. Payment and disbursement systems are supported by established contingency processes to maintain continued access to funds. Securities ownership is recorded on a book-entry basis, with custodian banks or depository participants (such as Merrill and BofA Securities) maintaining beneficial ownership records for their clients. These globally recognized protocols provide investors with a high level of liquidity and security for assets held with major financial institutions.
How we maintain continuity of service
Key strategies are utilized to support critical operations during and after disruption:
- Technology and data recovery: A resilient architecture designed for rapid restoration of essential client services, supported by globally distributed data centers. Electronic and physical backups capture intraday activity for point-of-disruption recovery, with mainframe and distributed platform solutions aligned to the criticality of functions like order processing, settlement and account access.
Recovery times may range from immediate to four hours, with some scenarios extending to the next business day or beyond.
- Contingency locations: Geographically dispersed recovery sites, backup facilities, and remote command centers that allow us to shift critical functions—such as order management, transaction processing and account maintenance—to alternate locations or processes when needed.
- Operational readiness assessments: Ongoing evaluation of our ability to maintain operations during a disruption, including validation of client communication channels, access to mission-critical systems and records, financial and capital resilience and the recovery capabilities of key third-party providers.
How to obtain information during a disruption
You can obtain account information and instructions for accessing your funds through:
- Your Financial Advisor or Relationship Manager
- The toll-free number listed on your account statement
Important Notice
While our recovery plans are robust and regularly reviewed, no plan can eliminate all risk or guarantee availability under all circumstances. Material updates to this information will be posted on our website or provided upon request.