How a dinner table conversation led to BofA’s Support Services division made of neurodivergent employees

85% of people with autism in America are unemployed, according to the World Economic Forum. This affects their ability to build healthy financial futures. Banks have a part to play in changing this, not only as institutions that have a unique understanding of how finances can impact lives and families but also as employers of 2 million people across America. 

But what does the roadmap to creating a more equitable workplace look like? The answer is that it’s a combination of efforts. Banks like Wells Fargo have reworked their employee onboarding process to better fit the needs of the neurodiverse talent pool, and Bank of America has dedicated Accessibility Specialists that ensure internal digital tools are designed with differently abled employees in mind.

The call for more inclusion in financial services is a broad one, and organizations across the industry are finding their own routes to a more equitable future and workplace. For Bank of America, one answer is Support Services, an in-house marketing and fulfillment team that primarily employs differently abled people including neurodivergent individuals.

What is BofA’s Support Services?

Comprising over 250 employees, BofA’s Support Services operates in Newark (DE), Belfast (ME), Dallas, and Boston. Operating as a back office support function, Support Services resides within the bank’s Global Human Resources, handling fulfillment tasks, such as printing and mail, for every major line of business in the company.

From the dinner table to the bank

The motivation for Support Services emerged from a conversation that Charles Cawley, the CEO of a legacy bank (MBNA) later acquired by BofA, had with his friends over dinner in the 1990s — the same decade that saw the birth of the Americans With Disability Act. Cawley’s friends worried about their neurodivergent son’s future who was in high school at the time. For Cawley this was a call to action, who told his friends that they don’t need to worry about their son and that he “would provide for himself”, according to Mark Feinour, Executive Director of Support Services at Bank of America.

This personal impetus moved Cawley to create Support Services, which started at first with only three employees. Feinour adds that he is proud to say that once Cawley’s friend’s son graduated high school, he was hired at the bank and is a very “well-tenured teammate”. 

The average employee tenure at Support Services, Feinour reports, is 18 years, a testament to the program’s core motivations and values. 

Feinour himself has been a part of the Support Services team for 25 years. He had joined the team initially in a financial role, and at the time, was uncertain since he had never worked with colleagues who had disabilities before. After his first day, he wondered, “Did I just make the worst career move by deciding to go here?”

But that was the last time Feinour had doubts. 

The executive Feinour worked under passed away a few months after Feinour’s joining, and the company then hired an executive who had an extensive background in working with differently abled people, but very little experience in finance and budgeting. The pair complemented each other well, according to Feniour. 

When this executive moved on to a different role, Feinour was ready to pick the baton. “I always say that the most rewarding part of my job is where my teammates have been able to grow both personally and professionally,” he said. 

Although Support Services has now found its own rhythm and space within the Bank of America mothership, it wasn’t always this way. At the start the bank would interview and hire neurodivergent employees and then look for what work to assign them. “We sort of put the cart before the horse,” said Feinour. 

Eventually they redesigned the process by coming up with use cases and collaborating with their line to business partners to identify the work Support Services could assist with.

For example, now Support Services assists the bank’s Home Loans team, which previously used to prepare and mail mortgage-related documents from 130 different locations across the country. A decade ago the Support Services and Home Loans team centralized the process by transferring the documents to Support Services. Due to this new process their Home Loans team is able to mitigate quality control issues and customer privacy issues while also realizing supply cost savings. 

As corporate processes change in response to digitization, Support Services is changing as well.

Feinour adds that they have seen the volume in some jobs inside the function go down but they have been retraining and coaching employees to build more digital skills. “We are actually looking at ways that we can continue to develop our teammates professionally, but that also enables us to see what other opportunities for work are out there that we can bring into Support Services,” he said. 

Through Bank of America’s Support Services, we get a powerful story about how decision makers can make generational changes but also proof: A majority of neurodivergent people are unemployed in America, but this can change if we make changes on an institutional level.