Merrill Lynch

Merrill Lynch Wealth Management is led by Lindsay Hans and Eric Schimpf as co-heads, roles they assumed in 2024 under the broader Bank of America Global Wealth & Investment Management division. The organization reports up through division head Eric Schimpf and ultimately to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. Institutional investment banking functions still bearing the Merrill name operate separately under Bank of America Securities.

Merrill Lynch is not an independent company. It is the brand under which Bank of America conducts retail wealth management and a portion of institutional brokerage. The legal entity Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America, serving as both broker-dealer and registered investment adviser for the firm’s advisory platform.

The investment banking and capital markets operations once housed in Merrill Lynch & Co. were folded into Bank of America's institutional division, operating under the combined Bank of America Merrill Lynch brand for years and now as Bank of America Securities. The retail wealth-management business is the primary operation still using the Merrill name directly.

As of the most recent Bank of America disclosures, the Global Wealth & Investment Management division, of which Merrill is the largest component, held over $3 trillion in total client balances. The precise split attributable to Merrill-branded advisory accounts alone is not broken out separately in public filings, but it constitutes the majority of the division's American wealth-management assets.

Merrill maintains extensive branch coverage across all fifty states, with the heaviest concentration of advisors and private-wealth offices in New York, California, Florida, Texas, and Illinois. Many offices operate in close physical proximity to Bank of America retail banking centers, leveraging the consumer-bank footprint for client referrals.