BAC Dividend Calculator

About BAC

Bank of America Corporation — ticker BAC — is one of the four largest US commercial banks by deposits, alongside JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup. The company sits at the center of the US consumer-banking, wealth-management, and global-markets ecosystem, and its dividend history is inseparable from the 2008 global financial crisis. Heading into 2008, BAC was paying roughly $0.64 per share quarterly. As the crisis deepened the company absorbed Countrywide and then Merrill Lynch, took TARP capital from the US Treasury, and cut the quarterly dividend in stages — to $0.32 in late 2008 and then to $0.01 in early 2009, where it remained for over two years. The current dividend record on this page starts on 2011-08-31 because that is when Polygon's series begins; the per-share amount stayed at a token $0.01 quarterly until the Federal Reserve approved the first meaningful post-crisis increase. Treating BAC as a "Dividend Aristocrat" candidate is therefore not appropriate — the streak from the post-crisis reset is still well short of the twenty-five-year minimum, and the 2008-2011 cut is one of the larger dividend cuts in modern large-cap US history.

The 10-year dividend growth rate of approximately 18.4% looks unusually high for a mature money-center bank, but the number is mechanically inflated by the post-2011 starting base of $0.01 per quarter. As the dividend was rebuilt — to single-digit cents, then to teens, then to the high twenties — the percentage growth rates from that near-zero base were enormous, and they pull the long-window average up. The 5-year growth rate of about 8.4% is the more honest figure for a forward projection: it covers a window when the per-share amount was already in the high teens to mid-twenties of cents, and the growth pace looks much closer to what a mature regulated bank can plausibly sustain. The calculator on this page lets you override the default with a custom growth rate if you want to model a more conservative or optimistic path.

Bank of America operates across four segments — Consumer Banking, Global Wealth and Investment Management (including Merrill Lynch and the private bank), Global Banking, and Global Markets. Roughly half of the revenue is net interest income, which makes earnings sensitive to the level and shape of the US Treasury yield curve, to deposit beta, and to credit losses across the consumer and commercial loan books. The remainder is fee income from wealth management, investment banking, trading, and card services. Credit ratings are firmly investment grade, but well below the top-tier ratings carried by the very strongest non-financial corporates. The dividend yield at the current $53.63 share price and $0.28 quarterly payment is approximately 2.09% — meaningfully higher than a broad index but lower than the yields on dedicated dividend or high-yield equity wrappers.

How BAC pays dividends, and the CCAR constraint

BAC pays cash dividends quarterly, with declarations and pay dates clustered around the end of each calendar quarter. The most recent three quarterly amounts are $0.28, $0.28, and $0.28; this was raised from $0.26 approximately Q3 2025 (qualify on exact quarter — verify against the company's investor-relations declarations page if exact timing matters to your projection). Ex-dividend date typically falls a few days before the record date, with the pay date one to three weeks after the ex-date. Holders who own shares as of the close on the day before the ex-date receive the dividend; holders who buy on or after the ex-date wait for the next quarterly payment. On the ex-date the share price drops by approximately the distribution amount on the open, the standard mechanic for any quarterly US dividend stock.

The critical structural feature for BAC and other large US banks is that dividend increases are not at the sole discretion of the board. Under the Federal Reserve's Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review — universally referred to as CCAR — the largest US banks must submit annual capital plans showing they can absorb a severely-adverse stress scenario while continuing to lend. Proposed dividends and share-repurchase programs are part of that capital plan. The Fed can object to the plan and require the bank to scale back its capital return. In practice this means BAC's dividend growth pace is bounded by what the Fed is willing to approve in any given year given the bank's projected capital ratios under the stress scenario; the board cannot simply decide to accelerate the dividend regardless of regulatory posture. This is one of the structural reasons the post-2011 dividend recovery has been steady but slow, and one of the reasons a long-run growth assumption for BAC should be more conservative than the 18.4% 10-year figure suggests.

Holders who DRIP through their broker receive additional shares purchased at the prevailing market price around each quarterly pay date. Major brokers offer fractional-share DRIP for BAC, so the full cash distribution is reinvested regardless of how the per-share amount divides into the share price. There is no managed-distribution policy, no covered-call overlay, and no return of capital — the cash that funds the dividend comes entirely from operating earnings, subject to regulatory capital constraints.

Who BAC suits, and the Berkshire context

BAC suits investors who want exposure to a large US money-center bank with a moderate dividend yield, growing income in the high single digits in the base case, and the structural sensitivities of a regulated deposit-taking institution. The yield at roughly 2.09% is too low for BAC to function as a primary high-income holding the way a covered-call ETF or REIT might, but it is meaningfully higher than the yield on a broad index fund and the per-share dividend is growing. In a diversified portfolio BAC is usually one slice of the US financials allocation, alongside or in place of JPM and other large-bank peers; investors who already hold a broad dividend ETF such as SCHD will note that SCHD's index methodology has historically included BAC and several large-bank peers, so a direct BAC position partly duplicates an existing SCHD position.

In taxable accounts, BAC's dividends are qualified for the long-term capital-gains rate, given the standard holding-period rule. Because the yield is moderate rather than high, the absolute tax friction in a taxable account is meaningful but not large relative to the position size. In a tax-advantaged account, the dividend reinvests with no current tax consequences, which makes the long-run compounding cleaner on paper but does not change the underlying business mechanics. Investors should also be aware that large US banks are unusually exposed to single-event tail risks — credit shocks, regulatory action, and trading losses — that are not symmetric with the upside.

One often-discussed feature of BAC's shareholder register: Berkshire Hathaway is BAC's largest shareholder and has been since the post-crisis period. In August 2011, Warren Buffett purchased $5B of 6% preferred stock together with warrants to acquire common stock at approximately $7.14 per share — a deal struck during the depths of the post-crisis confidence crisis. Berkshire exercised the warrants in 2017, converting them into common stock, and has held a very large common-stock stake ever since; recent 13F filings imply Berkshire owns roughly 10% of BAC's outstanding shares (qualify against the most recent 13F if the precise figure matters). For an individual investor this Berkshire stake is informational rather than actionable — it does not change BAC's underlying business mechanics or regulatory constraints — but it is one of the more visible single-holder concentrations in the US large-cap universe and is worth knowing as context.

Comparing BAC to JPM and SCHD

A common framing for an investor considering BAC is the comparison with JPMorgan Chase (JPM). Both are large US money-center banks under CCAR, both pay quarterly qualified dividends, both have moderate yields with single-digit growth, and both are heavily exposed to the US interest-rate cycle and credit cycle. JPM has historically traded at a higher price-to-tangible-book multiple, reflecting market perception of more consistent post-crisis return on equity. BAC's yield at any given time tends to run slightly higher than JPM's, reflecting the multiple differential more than any sustained difference in dividend growth pace. Compared to SCHD — the broad US dividend ETF that holds BAC and JPM among its top financial-sector positions — a single-stock BAC position carries the full company-specific risk of a single regulated deposit-taking institution, including credit shocks and regulatory action, where SCHD diversifies that risk across roughly one hundred holdings. This content is educational only; it is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold BAC, and individual circumstances vary.