BofA (BAC) Wealth Management Needs to Improve Says Krawcheck

Commenting on her wealth management unit, Bank of America's (NYSE:BAC) Sallie Krawcheck said she sees strong revenue growth, but it needs to do better at attracting new client assets as there are limits to how deeply you can grow with existing clients.

Krawcheck said she expects the unit to grow revenue at a 6 percent to 7 percent clip, but looks for margins to increase from pretax 14.6 percent at the end of 2010 to 20 percent going forward.

"We're not sitting back and saying, 'Let things roll off the balance sheet and we'll be fine. We are looking to grow adviser headcount and accelerate the shift to higher margin (services)," added Krawcheck.

Citing the referral of over 8,000 clients from her wealth management unit to the commercial and banking and markets divisions, a 71 percent increase over 2009, she concluded "there is a lot more we can do here."

Bank of America is trading at $14.65, up $0.62, or 4.38 percent, as of 2:29 PM EST.