Remarks made during today's Annual Meeting of Shareholders may contain forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that may cause actual results to materially differ from expectations are detailed in Bank of America's SEC filings, including the 2020 Form 10 ks available on the website, www.bankofamerica.com. I'll now turn the call over to Brian Moynihan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Good morning. This is Brian Moynihan, and welcome to our 2021 Bank of America Corporation Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I want to thank everyone for joining us today by webcast. At our company, we are continuing to follow the advice of our medical experts and make decisions within IAS West Bank and say for our team, our customers, our community and U. S.
Shareholders and believe holding our annual meeting again this year virtually is the right decision for us. I hope you and your families are staying safe and healthy as we continue to make steps towards resolving this global health crisis. The meeting agenda and the rules of conduct for today's meeting are available on the virtual meeting website. These rules are now in effect. In the event of a technical malfunction or other disruption that interferes with our ability to continue the webcast meeting prior to the opening and closing of the polls, the meeting may be adjourned, recessed or expedited.
If that happens, the polls will open immediately and will close 5 minutes thereafter. All votes received prior to the time the polls are closed will be counted, the meeting will not be reconvened and the results will be announced publicly. With that, I now call the 2021 Bank of America Corporation Annual Meeting of Shareholders to order. At today's meeting, we're going to hear remarks from our outgoing Lead Independent Director, Jack Bovinger, as well as his successor, Lionel Knoll. I will then present an update of our company and then we'll consider the proposals to be voted on the meeting.
We'll then answer questions about the proposals from the shareholders, which can now be submitted on our virtual meeting website. To ask a question, we ask shareholders to include their name and the number of shares they hold and briefly state the question in 1 or 2 sentences. In order to answer questions from as many shareholders as possible, we will limit each shareholder to 3 questions. In addition, please indicate if your question relates to one that proposed to be voted on so we can answer it before the polls close. We will then provide preliminary voting results before concluding today's meeting on an official basis.
To follow the official terms of the meeting, we have reserved up to 30 minutes to address general questions from shareholders about Bank of America's business and operations. If you have personal financial matters or questions related to your specific account, I encourage our customers to contact our customer service representatives directly for personalized assistance through the link or phone number included in the rules of conduct of this meeting. In addition to Jack and Lydall, we are joined today by other members of our Board of Directors, Sharon Allen Sue Vais Frank Bramble Pierre de Vic Arnold Donald Linda Hudson Monica Lozano Tom May Denise Ramos Clayton Rose, Mike White, Tom Woods, Dave Yost and Maria Zuber. I'll now ask Jack is going to now make a few remarks. Now before he does so, we should recognize Jack.
He has been a Director since August 2012 and served as our Lead Independent Director since October 2014. Jack will be retiring from the Board after this meeting due to our corporate governance guidelines. I want to thank Jack for his dedication to our company, his deep commitment to strong corporate governance and his tightest work to develop our industry leading shareholder engagement practices. We're also going to hear from Lionel Knoll. Lionel has served on our Board since January 2013.
He was chosen last September by our independent directors to succeed Jack as our lead independent director beginning after this meeting. Lionel's leadership skills has demonstrated strong business acumen, his extensive risk management and strategic planning skills and his experience in leadership across many highly regulated global businesses make him an excellent choice to serve as our next Lead Independent Director. So first, we're going to go to our colleague, Jack Pittman.
Thank you, Brian, and welcome to all of you joining us virtually today for our 2021 shareholders meeting. On behalf of all the independent directors, thank you for your continued investment in Bank of America. You have already received our 2020 annual report and 2021 proxy materials. The annual report highlights how a decade long focus on responsible growth helped Bank of America respond to the challenges of 2020 and how the company is well positioned to continue delivering for its shareholders and all of its stakeholders going forward. I would like to take a moment to recognize the extraordinary efforts made by Bank of America employees over the past year to support clients, communities and each other.
The independent directors have engaged regularly with Brian and the leadership team throughout this crisis and are grateful for the dedication and determination of the Bank of America team. As we have shared previously, this will be my last annual meeting as a Director of Bank of America. My retirement from the Board will be effective as of the conclusion of this meeting. It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve on the Bank of America Board, to represent this great company and to have the opportunity to engage with so many of you, our shareholders. The feedback you've shared with me along the way has been invaluable to the Board and I thank you for your time and input.
Since 2014, I've been privileged to serve as the Board's Lead Independent Director. Today, Lionel Nowell will assume the role of Lead Independent Director. Lionel has been a valuable member of our Board for many years. He is totally committed to his new role and will continue to meet regularly with shareholders to hear what's on your minds. Thank you once again.
With that, I will turn it over to Lyle to say a few words.
Thank you, Jack, for the kind words, your friendship and for the independent oversight and strong corporate governance you have provided to the Board and the company over the past 9 years. Also, thank you, Brian, for your leadership and for the outstanding work you and your team do every day for Bank of America and our shareholders. And thanks to all of you for being with us today. I've had the pleasure to serve as the Director of Bank of America since 2013, and I'm honored to have been chosen by my fellow Board members to serve as Lead Independent Director. The fifty independent directors bring a wealth of diverse experiences and unique perspectives to our Board and committee meeting.
And we will continue to work closely with Brian and the leadership team as they remain focused on driving responsible growth. As Jack mentioned, I value the input of all our shareholders, and I'm committed to maintaining a consistent rhythm of engagement in the same fashion as Jack has done. I appreciate your investment in our company and look forward to meeting and getting to know many of you in the future. And now I will turn it back to Blaine to continue our meeting.
Thank you, Lionel, and thank you, Jack, and thank you on behalf of all the shareholders for your service.
Let's go to the company update.
It has been quite a year since our last annual meeting as this pandemic took hold across the world. At the time we gathered last year, the health and humanitarian crisis was just beginning. Since then, our teammates have been working around the clock to address the immediate health and safety needs of each other, continue to serve our clients and deliver ongoing support to the communities which we work and lead. Cliff. As we join you today, we're encouraged by the progress we see that's being made in response to health crisis, driven currently by the distribution of vaccines.
And we're also encouraged by the accelerating economic recovery we see as the economies reopen. And so before we begin, I'd like to thank all of my teammates, all 200,000 plus of them, for the extraordinary efforts and contributions over the last year.
I'd like to add a special thanks
to those teammates working in our financial centers and others who have come into the office every day during a crisis, all of who have continued to support the everyday financial needs of our clients and economic health of our local communities. At our annual meeting a year ago, we talked about how our decade plus long focus on responsible growth has prepared us for a situation like this, and our results over the past year confirm that point and illustrate how a company can truly deliver profits and purpose. As a reminder, there are 4 tenets to responsible growth. We must grow in the market, no excuses. We must grow with a customer focus.
We must grow within our risk framework. And we must grow in a sustainable manner that has the following elements. We have to drive operational excellence to pay for all the work we do. We have to be the best place for our teammates to work because that's how we do a great job for our customers, and we have to share the success we have as our company with our community. Through this framework, Bank of America has not only delivered strong results, we have emerged as a stronger company with a stronger balance sheet than we entered the healthcare crisis.
Compared to a year ago, we have more capital with higher capital ratios and record liquidity. Our customer base has grown across every one of our diverse and complementary businesses. Our clients are using our digital platforms at record levels with more than 40,000,000 active digital users. Satisfaction levels across our customer base of employees are record highs as is our overall brand loyalty according to third parties. In 2020, we earned approximately $18,000,000,000 after tax in net income or $1.87 per share.
That was done through one of the worst economic environments in modern history. And just last week, we reported a strong quarter with 8 $100,000,000 in after tax net income or $0.86 per share. That's up nearly 50% over the prior quarter. Our results for the quarter reflect the improving economic conditions as well as our diverse and complementary business model, which remains key to delivering sustainable results to virtually any market environment. As an example of that, our Global Markets and Wealth Management businesses, which typically benefit from a healthy capital markets environment, continued to perform well throughout the past year.
Our Consumer and Global Banking business has also performed well, but was more negatively impacted for the several quarters by interest rates and credit costs. Those businesses continue their strong recovery. Looking forward, we see continued progress being made in the health crisis. More businesses are now opening up. Unemployment continues to decline.
Consumers are spending at record levels. We are optimistic that expanding economic activity will in turn fuel loan growth as companies borrow, build inventory, invest and hire more employees. We are well positioned to continue driving responsible growth as the economy continues to gain momentum. This means delivering for you, our shareholders. It also means delivering for our clients, our teammates, our communities and at the same time, delivering progress on important issues facing society.
I'd like to touch quickly on each of these. For our shareholders, our long dedication to responsive growth has been in a position to both earn money and deliver more back to you. Last year, we returned $12,000,000,000 in capital through dividends and net share repurchases. We did this even as we halted share repurchases late in the Q1 of 2020 in line with additional federal banking restrictions. In the Q1, we returned Q1 of 20 21, we returned an additional $5,000,000,000 of capital to shareholders through common dividends and share repurchases.
And I'm sure as many of you saw, we recently announced our expectation to increase those repurchases. And following the current Federal Reserve Board restrictions still applicable to the Q2 of 2021, we expect to increase dividends over the coming quarters. We have repurchased this stock and returned this capital all while investing heavily in our firm, in our products, in our physical plant and in our brand and serving the record demand from our customers. We moved to our customers, our purpose is, of course, to make their financial lives better. And over the past year, through the efforts big and small, we have lived that purpose.
Through responsible growth, we have remained a source of strength and stability for our clients, and clients have, in turn, increased their business with us. During the Q1 of 2021, average deposits across our company were up over $366,000,000,000 from the previous year. In Consumer, we saw record deposits remain the number one U. S. Bank by retail deposits.
We also reported the most number of consumer checking accounts opened in our company's history. We also hit record consumer investment wealth management client balances, providing thousands of new households leading in a virtual client engagement environment. Combined across our investment platform, investment flows from our customers were a record $48,000,000,000 We raised 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars on behalf of our clients. Companies employ people make products and serve the economy, and we reported investment banking fees due to that. Our digital capabilities continue to be a competitive advantage for us, and we've seen strong client engagement across all our businesses.
At the end of the Q1, we had 70% of consumer small business households actively using our digital platforms. Digital sales now totaled 49% of all consumer banking sales 19,500,000 Erica users, up 60% from last year Erica interactions were up nearly 3x in last year 13,500,000 active to the cell users, up nearly onethree over last year, while dollar volume is up 80%. A record number of record percent of 80% of Merrill Lynch households active using online and mobile platform this quarter. A 49% year over year increase in active users is our CashPro app, our commercial digital app, which allows company treasurers and CFOs to make payments and transact to the same ease that our consumer bank clients are doing. Those digital capabilities help us deliver a personalized experience to our clients that spends their entire relationship with us, while at the same time reducing costs for us.
We spent more than 10 years $30,000,000,000 investing in technology to create and extend our digital leadership and investment technology, clearly remains a strategic priority for us going forward. At last year's meeting, we talked about our commitment to supporting clients negatively impacted by the coronavirus through our own programs and by helping deliver federal relief programs. At the outset, that was about deferrals, and we had over 2,000,000 deferrals came in through our client base. Debt was total payments of $55,000,000,000 were deferred to our client assisted program. Today, due in part to government stimulus efforts, clients are better positioned to manage through the pandemic.
Our deferrals today only cover $6,000,000,000 mostly in 1st mortgage loan balances. We're the 1st major bank to begin accepting Paycheck Protection Program, our PPP, application about a year ago. To date, we have extended nearly 500,000 PPP loans to small business owners, delivering more than $34,500,000,000 in funding to help our clients continue to operate and pay their employees. We've also processed more than $73,000,000,000 in stimulus payments into our customers' accounts. Now moving to our teammates, they've come together like never before to deliver all this for our clients.
We have remained committed to supporting them however we can. This is our commitment to be a great place to work, part of being having responsive growth is sustainable. This includes additional benefits and resources aimed at promoting health and well-being, both physical and mental. That included on-site coronavirus testing, no cost access to virtual medical doctors and mental health specialists. We provided child and elder care assistance to ease our teammates' ability to work from home.
As schools closed and nursing home closed and our teammates had to deal with a different situation than they entered the pandemic. We gave them the right to hire somebody to come and work in a home, pay them $100 a day at the company's expense. Today, we're through $3,700,000 of that child care and elder care. Recently, we expanded our support providing resources to help teammates get vaccinated as they can be. That includes paid time off for U.
S. Employees who receive their vaccine, local vaccine tip sheets to help them find out how and when they get a vaccine and access to available appointments at vaccine clinics. As we see progress in the health crisis, we continue to make plans for our teammates who are currently working from home to return to the office. We will do so on a business by business, mark by market, office by office basis, guided by our health and safety framework. Provided that we continue to see the trends we're seeing today, our expectation in the U.
S. Is we'll back generally back towards a more normal operating posture as we move past Labor Day in other areas around the world is different. Of course, the health and safety of our team remains a top priority as we make plans to return to office, and we'll continue to monitor and adjust our plans as needed. Whether working in our financial centers, our offices or working from home, our teammates have gone to extraordinary lengths to support our clients and each other. In this year, we recognized approximately 97% of our teammates globally were delivering together compensation.
That is the 4th year of similar of the commitments to 10 community colleges to help them drive skill development in their communities served. We distributed 25,000,000 masks to fit as well as hand sanitizer and other personal protective equipment to underserved communities across the U. S. We also recently tripled our affordable housing commitment to 15,000,000,000 dollars from $5,000,000,000 and issued a $2,000,000,000 quality process sustainability bond designed to advance racial quality, economic opportunity, environmental sustainability. In 2020 alone, we provided $6,170,000,000 in affordable housing and economic development financing to help build strong sustainable communities across the U.
S. Earlier this month, we significantly expanded our environmental business initiative to target $1,000,000,000,000 by 2,030 to accelerate the transition to a low carbon sustainable economy. This is a transition and this is also part of a broader 1,500,000,000,000 dollars sustainable finance goal, which includes both the environmental transition investments and the social and inclusive development investments and spans our activities across the globe. As you know, earlier this year, we outlined our initial plans to achieve our goal of net 0 greenhouse gas emissions and financing activities operations supply chain before 2,050. For over a decade, we have focused on driving responsible growth that we can create value for every stakeholder for society through every economic environment.
That focus positions us well for the unforeseen events of 2020. That focus positions us well for 2021 and beyond for this company. Thank you for your support as shareholders, and I'd like to ask Ross Jeffries, our Corporate Secretary, to review the meeting rules and present the Corporate Secretary's report. Mr. Jeffries?
Thank you, Brian. As Brian noted, today we will consider the 8 items for shareholder vote, 4 management proposals and 4 shareholder proposals included in our 2021 proxy statement. Shareholder proponents will have up to 3 minutes to discuss their proposals. After the proposals have been presented, we will close the voting, tabulate the votes and announce the preliminary voting results. Again, shareholders may submit questions on the virtual meeting website.
When submitting questions, we ask that shareholders include their name and number of shares held. In order to address questions from as many shareholders as possible during the meeting, we will limit each shareholder to 3 questions. If a shareholder submits more than one question, we may address only one of those questions and respond to questions submitted by other shareholders before addressing the additional questions. We ask that you please briefly state your question in 1 to 2 sentences. Lengthy questions may be paraphrased.
Questions from multiple shareholders on the same topic may be proved, summarized and answered together to avoid repetition. You may vote the shares you hold through the virtual meeting website until the polls are closed. However, if you've already submitted your proxy to vote on these matters, you do not need to vote again unless you want to change your vote. Notice of today's meeting and the related proxy materials or notice of Internet availability of these materials were mailed beginning March 8, 2021, to all shareholders of record as of March 1, 2021. Belinda Massapra, a representative of Broadridge Financial Services, has been appointed Inspector and is participating in today's meeting by phone.
She has advised me that holders of shares representing at least 84.5% of the shares entitled to vote are present in person or represented by proxy, which constitutes a quorum. Brian?
Thank you, Ross. I declare the quorum is present, and I'd like to take a moment to recognize my Bank of America teammates who are serving as proxies today's meeting. They are Raul Anaya, who is on the management team and runs our Business Banking Group and Cynthia Bowman, our Chief Diversity Inclusion and Talent Acquisition Officer, Uber Business Senior colleague in our Human Resources team. Thank you to Raul and Cynthia for joining us today by phone. Also joining us by phone today are Lisa Sawicki, Jay Harris and Richard Slaive, representatives from our registered public independent accounting firm, Vice WaterhouseCoopers.
We're now ready to consider the 8 items that are up for shareholder vote. The polls are now open to vote on these proposals. The Board management proposals are: number 1, electing our 16 director nominees number 2, approving our executive compensation through an advisory non binding say on pay resolution number 3, ratifying the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent public accounting firm for the year 2021 and number 4, amending restating our key employee equity plan. There are also 4 shareholder proposals that are included in our proxy statement to be presented. The first shareholder proposal relates to proxy access and was submitted by John Chavette.
James Riccritte is on the line to present the proposal on behalf of Mr. Chavette. Mr. McKritte, you have 3 minutes to present this first proposal, then we'll get your second proposal. You'll hear a double beep when you have 30 seconds remaining and then 3 minutes elapses, the line will be muted.
Mr. Richie, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. This is proposal 5 to improve our Catch-twenty two proxy access. Shareholders request that our Board of Directors take the steps necessary to enable as many shareholders as may be needed to combine their shares to equal 3% of our stock owned continuously for 3 years in order to enable shareholder proxy access. This could really be called a baby step proposal. It's asking for so little and adopting this proposal would show management's commitment to diversity.
This proposal would not result in the need for management to verify the ownership of even one more share. As a practical matter, this proposal could even result in management verifying fewer shares if shareholders plan to make use of this proposal. It is disappointing that management does not support the diversity that this proposal calls for. As a practical matter, it is unlikely that more than 50 shareholders will participate in nominating directors using proxy access. The beauty of a good governance proposal like this proposal is that it would not result in more costs because the mere presence of good governance serves as a guardrail to make sure that management elects the best directors on their own, because if management does not, then shareholders have a practical remedy with teeth to make their director nominations known to management.
Our current proxy access is way out of balance and much too difficult to make use of. There has not been one proxy access candidate placed on the ballot of any company during the past 5 years, yet 500 companies have a right to proxy access during those 5 years. No chance is not a balance that shareholders can live with. Even with the requested amendment, a proxy access candidate still faces the challenge of getting more votes than at least one established director. This would require overwhelmingly diverse shareholder support.
Please vote yes, improve our Catch-twenty two proxy access vote for proposal number 5. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next shareholder proposal relates to shareholder action by written consent was submitted by Kenneth Steiner. Mr. McRitchie will also present this proposal on behalf of Mr. Steiner.
Again, Mr. McRitchie, you have 3 minutes and you're here at double beep, but you just did when you have 30 seconds remaining. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thank you very much. So this is shareholder right to act by written consent. Shareholders request that our Board of Directors take the necessary steps to permit written consent by shareholders entitled to cast the minimum number of votes that would be necessary to authorize an action at a meeting at which all shareholders entitled to vote thereon were present and voting. This proposed topic won 95% at Dover Corporation, 88% support at AT and T.
Taking action by written consent in place of meeting allows shareholders to raise important issues outside the normal meeting cycle, like the election of a new director. For instance, a new director could be elected to replace who received substantial negative votes. For example, in 2020, Maria Zuberth received a whopping 407,000,000 negative votes. According to the argument in the 2020 BAC proxy, management should at least tactically be in favor of this proposal. Management said that given a choice, shareholders are better served by calling for a special meeting than acting by written consent.
If that's really the case, then management should tactically favor giving shareholders the right to act by written consent since it's supposedly less effective and management could thus have an easier path to resist shareholder. In any event, a major advantage of special shareholder meeting has been completely blown out of the water since the publication of the 2020 BAC Annual Meeting proxy. The cornerstone of that argument was a special meeting permits shareholders, the Board and company management to discuss applicable shareholder concerns. However, that of tightly controlled online shareholder meetings, which can only be 10 minutes in some cases, shareholders can be severely restricted in engaging with management and making their views known because all challenging questions and comments directed to management can be screened out. For instance, Goodyear management hit the mute button right in the middle of a formal shareholder proposal presentation at its 2020 meeting.
AT and T would not allow proponents to call in by telephone. In 2020, BAC management was apparently ignorant of the fact that written consent can be notice can be given to all shareholders of a proposed action. Now more than ever, shareholders need to have the option to take
Thank you, Mr. Mukherjee. The next shareholder proposal relates to change in the company's corporate organizational form and was submitted by John Harrington. Sarah Murphy is on the line to present this proposal on behalf of Mr. Harrington.
As a reminder, you have 3 minutes to present your proposal. You'll hear a double beep when you have seconds. Remaining, Ms. Murphy.
Thank you very much. This is proposal 7 requesting a change in organizational form. In August 2019, our company's Chairman and CEO signed a statement on the purpose of a corporation, committing our company to all stakeholders, supporting the communities in which we work and protecting the environment by embracing sustainability practices across our businesses. Inconsistent with our bank's embrace of sustainability, our Bank from 2016 through 2019 loaned more than $156,000,000,000 in fossil fuel financing, helping to drive multi generational climate change. The commitment of bank policy to all stakeholders and to sustainability such as addressing climate impacts raises potential conflicts for Board members bound by fiduciary duties reflected in our company's bylaws, articles of incorporation, committee charters and Delaware law.
Fortunately, the State of Delaware in 2013 enacted a law to permit Delaware Corporations to amend their certificates of incorporation to become a public benefit corporation, thereby committing to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. Pursuant to Delaware law, a public benefit is to encourage corporations to operate in such a manner that is in the best interests of those materially affected by its conduct, which includes other stakeholders in addition to shareholders. Conventional corporations, by contrast, are required to privilege shareholder interests over those of stakeholders in cases where those conflict. Our Bank's responsible growth strategy fails to address this conundrum and relies upon the convenient trope that business can do well by doing good, when in reality, business can often do better by doing bad. Delaware adopted new amendments to the public benefit law that makes the adoption of the new more attractive and accessible.
The amended law reduces certain board member fiduciary liabilities for breaches of stakeholder interests and reduces the required shareholder approval of the conversion to a majority vote. This law is consistent with our company's commitment to the statement on the purpose of corporation, providing the opportunity for the Board to legally articulate the purpose of our corporation in a manner that would reconcile accountability to stakeholders. Shareholders request the Board to approve an amendment to the company's restated certificate of incorporation to become a public benefit corporation pursuant to Delaware law to submit the proposed amendment to the shareholders for approval. Such a change would enable the company to operate in a responsible and sustainable manner that balances the stockholders' pecuniary interests and the best interests of those stakeholders affected by the Corporation's conduct. I hereby move item number 7.
Thank you. The next and final share of proposal relates to Racial Equity Audit and was submitted by CTW Investment Group. Tejal Patel is on the line to present the proposal. As I remind you, you have 3 minutes to present your proposal. You hear a double beep when you have 30 seconds remaining.
At 3 minutes, you'll all be muted. This is Tal.
Thank you. On behalf of the CTW Investment Group, I hereby move Proposal 8 urging the Board of Directors to oversee a racial equity audit based on input from stakeholders. A racial equity audit would help Bank of America identify, remedy and avoid adverse impacts on non white stakeholders and communities of color, particularly in light of the bank's $1,250,000,000 commitment to advance racial equality. Bank of America has a conflicted history when it comes to addressing racial inequality within the communities it serves. Regulators have cited the bank for racial imbalances in its mortgage lending practices.
The bank has also profited from underwriting bonds partially used to pay for police related settlements at a time when law enforcement agencies are being scrutinized for discrimination and excessive use of force against black and brown communities. It's also donated to police foundations in multiple cities. Additionally, there's a lack of racial diversity in Bank of America's executive leadership and a pattern of attrition among employees of color when comparing employees in lower ranks to higher ranks based on the bank's EEO-one data. As with any other operational or financial review, the real benefit of a racial equity audit lies in its independence. The auditor must have a civil rights background in order to produce credible and useful information.
The objective perspective and civil rights expertise required for an audit of this nature cannot be provided by management, internal counsel or the Board. For Bank of America and its investors, the racial equity audit is an important risk management tool. In the banking industry, trust is paramount. Changes in public, consumer and employee sentiment have put systemic racism and racial injustice at the forefront of our national dialogue. Concerns about reputation, brand damage and talent attraction have prompted other major consumer facing companies such as Facebook, Starbucks and Airbnb to conduct these audits.
The racial equity audit is an important investment in Bank of America's long term sustainability and value protection. An audit of this nature would provide an objective assessment of the Bank's policies and practices as it relates to lending, human capital management and its philanthropic work. The proposal looks to evaluate the effectiveness of the company's policies in addressing racial equality and no existing regulatory requirement or inspection is sufficient to ensure that Bank of America is meeting its commitments. The Community Reinvestment Act does not evaluate discrimination based on race. And while data collected from the Consumer Financial Protection Board examinations may be helpful in assessing if Bank of America is meeting minimum standards, it is not sufficient to stay ahead of the risks.
Bank of America has committed $1,250,000,000 to advance racial equality. Given such a significant sum, investors need assurances that the bank's policies are effective at addressing these issues and the Bank of America is not acting in other ways that could negate any positive impact. Therefore, we urge shareholders to vote for proposal 8 requesting that the board oversee a racial equity audit. Thank you.
Thank you. We'll now respond to any questions from shareholders related to the 8 proposals to be voted on today. Specifically on these proposals, we'll pick up the general Q and A later. Lee McIntyre, our Head of Investor Relations David Leach, our General Counsel and Ross Jeffries, our Corporate Secretary, are here today to assist with those questions. I'll pause for a moment to see if there's any questions that are submitted specifically on the proposals.
Heather, have there been any questions submitted on proposals?
Brian, we have one question that is somewhat related to the proposals. I would ask the corporate secretary, how long will you keep the polls open after the last proposal has been presented?
As Brian noted earlier, the Chair opened the polls at the beginning and we've asked for shareholders to submit questions on the proposals. There are no other questions on the proposal. So when the Chair closes the polls, having addressed all of the shareholder questions on proposals, that's when we would close the polls.
Okay. That's all the questions. And Mr. McIntyre, Mr. Jefferies on the proposals?
Yes, that is correct. Okay. Thank you and for that question. And there being no further questions, I declare the polls are now closed. I'm now going to ask to review the preliminary voting results.
Ross, would you please report on the preliminary results for the votes today?
Our Inspector of Election reports on the following preliminary results. All 16 director nominees have been duly elected to the Board of Directors. The advisory vote on executive compensation has been approved. The appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers has been ratified and the proposed amendments to the key employee equity plan have been approved. None of the shareholder proposals received the required majority support.
Final voting results will be reported in a Form 8 ks filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission within 4 business days of today's meeting.
We have now completed the official business of the meeting and the formal meeting is now adjourned. We're now going to turn to our general questions about Bank of America that were submitted by your shareholders. As a reminder, the rules of the meeting remain in effect. If you have questions about a personal financial matter, I encourage you to go to the link or phone number in the rules of the meeting for direct personalized assistance. If we don't have time to answer your question during today's meeting, please contact us directly through our Investor Relations website.
As I stated earlier for the convenience of all, we're going to have 30 minutes of questions. Now, could I ask Mr. McIntyre to read any pertinent questions?
Yes, Brian. The first question relates to and we have a few questions around when do you think DAC will be able to resume increasing dividends again?
Well, the rules of the Federal Reserve for the Q2 of 2021 2021, excuse me, require that we continue to pay dividends at the same rate we pay them going into the period last year's Q2. I think it was the Q1 of that restriction. And we will continue to do that. As we come to the Q3 of 2021, we will move to what is called the SEB rules. So the rules are proposed by the Federal Reserve and they've announced at that time and then we'd expect to the Board would expect to start to follow our general capital management policies, which would include continued return of capital and increasing dividends aligned with earnings.
Brian, the next general set of questions relates to buybacks and what the share buybacks were in 2020 and what the program or the prospects are for 2021?
Well, going back to last few years, in 2019, we had about $28,000,000,000 in buybacks, again, because of the extra capital we'd accumulated through the decade. In 2020, because the restrictions that we voluntarily agreed to last year at the end of the Q1, we only repurchased $7,000,000,000 in stock and that was mostly in the Q1 prior to agreeing to those restrictions, which applied basically in the second, third and fourth quarter. In the Q1 so far this year, the rules are you can buy back up to your total earnings minus your dividends that we've bought back around a little over $3,000,000,000 And then just recently, we authorized a repurchase program on a go forward basis beginning this now in the Q2 of 2021 for $25,000,000,000 under the rules of the current restrictions as roll forward a quarter because we have higher earnings, we'd be a little over $4,000,000,000 of buybacks this quarter and then it will be under the SCB rules so called.
Thank you, Brian. The next question comes in that does BAC need physical locations to be successful? And can you talk about what the bank has done for financial centers?
Yes. We need to be high touch and high-tech, as we call it, across all our businesses. And so we continue to fine tune our physical plant, not only in our financial centers, but also our operations areas, our administrative buildings across the whole platform. For those of you who've been shareholders for a while, we started the decade in 2010 with about 120,000,000 to 130,000,000 square feet of real estate. We're down about 1,000,000 of across a decade, which the team did a great job of continuing to make our company more efficient and effective.
In terms of Financial Centers specifically, we opened about 57 new ones last year and 11 were in low and moderate income neighborhoods. We renovated about 400. And then in 2021, we've added about 35. At the same time, we have closed centers in areas that the customers don't demand them. But at the end of the day, we'll continue to have both we'll have financial centers and phones and digital and all things so that we can do a great job for our customers across all our different customer segments.
Thank you, Brian. The next question, can you talk about the
Well, in the area of small business on the deposit side, we're up $40,000,000,000 over the course of the year round numbers, in small business. And that remember, small business for us is a segment that serves companies up to $5,000,000 in revenues, so very small business. At the same time, we've opened we're up about 7% per year in accounts opened. And recently, we've seen the loan origination practices in small business back to their levels of originations closer to where we were before the pandemic. And on top of that, remember, we did 500,000 round number of PPP loans, which really the lion's share were in this segment for our company.
And so that was a tremendous amount of loans, dollars 30 odd 1,000,000,000 that were done on top of it. So the team has done a great job in small business led by Sharon Miller and we continue to do it. When you move to the commercial side, our commercial deposits are about $800,000,000,000 The debt moves to a that moves to the segment for $50,000,000 for Business Banking and $2,500,000,000 in up revenue companies excuse me, you have $5,000,000 to $50,000,000 for Business Banking and $50,000,000 $2,500,000,000 for middle market and those companies those teammates are doing well and continue to do more with each customer.
Brian, the next set of questions, there are several around inflation and perhaps give your view on inflation over the next year or so.
Well, there is a great discussion about the prospects of inflation. Is it and that's why you've seen rates move up, but now move back down over the last few weeks. But what is the discussion? The discussion is whether the amount of stimulus that's was started in the economy last year and continue through this year is such that it will cause inflation in prices, wages, etcetera. Purchase levels by consumers exceed that Bank of America exceeded what they were in 2019 and by a lot, in other words, by 17% year to date through April 'twenty one versus April 'sixteen 'twenty excuse me 'nineteen.
So there was a downdraft in 'nineteen, 'twenty, but now we're almost 17%, 18% above where it was in 2019. That kind of purchase power with the issues about supply chains could lead to price and those of you that see in the housing markets and other you've seen that. So the question is whether it's temporary or whether it's permanent and that will play out as we see how the economy recovers more fully, unemployment returns to normal and then frankly, how the consumption behavior and expectations by consumers and businesses are going forward.
Thank you, Brian. Mr. Chester would like to ask as a follow on to that, is the accommodative Fed policy and higher or lower interest rate policy better for BAC?
Well, lower rates are a necessity to accommodate the economy, make sure it's growing. Our team has projected economic growth of 7% for GDP for 2021 and 5.5% for 2022. Those are both good for us. That kind of economic activity, auto result and more activity by our customers and you're seeing that in the deposit balances and the market activity, of underwriting and things like that. The core the other side of that frankly is that we're not seeing strong loan growth because of the amount of liquidity consumers and companies have, which we got to get to.
But the other side of also is lower rates when you have the biggest non interest bearing deposit franchise in the world probably, at least in the United States and probably worldwide. The issue is you just have a problem that we can't go below 0 on the floors and therefore as rates come down, our margins get pinched. As rates go up, we'll recover that and hence that's the job of the team. So the only way to recover the interest income dollar number is to grow balances and deposits and loans and the team is busy with work doing.
Thank you, Brian. Is Bank of America finding a shortage of workers?
We hired 4,500 people in the Q1. So I think we're okay. I hear from clients that they're more concerned about this, especially certain skills that are in short supply because the amount of a couple of things. One is that some of the various the workers the skilled workers in terms of welders and stuff were downsized years ago and now with the boom need to be people need to be reskilled for that. And then in other areas, you read in the papers and it will be interesting as they fully open that restaurants and others are trying to get the workers back.
But I think people ought to remember we're in a very transitional period in the economy from 30% down, 30% up, etcetera, by quarters. And now we have 7%. It will take a while for this to all work through. The unemployment rate is still high at 6%. There's lots of workers available.
The question is getting new skills and getting them higher.
Thank you, Brian. The next question is from Scott Shepherd with the National Center For Public Policy Research. It reads, CEO, Brian Moynihan has said that Georgia Voter Integrity Legislation increases racial inequality and must be opposed in order to stand united in our advocacy for equal voting rights for all. Can you explain specifically why requiring voters to show ID in order to avoid fraud is racist? And also Bank of America's timeline for ending all requests for ID from job candidates, employees, visitors to your facilities, borrowers, lenders and attendees at your Annual Shareholder Meeting in conformance with your race based claims?
I don't think any statement was made by the company. The statements made by the company were clear that's right to vote is core to America, and that we want to make sure it's preserved and extended to the fullest extent possible. One of the things is there's lots of provisions in these laws and that's why last week after looking at some of the discussion, I asked I got to the conclusion that maybe we need a bipartisan commission in the elections of 2000, 2004, President George W. Bush appointed President former President Carter and James Baker to Secretary James Baker to form a commission to look at voting rules and they made a series of recommendations were delivered in 2,005 and they were implemented. I think similarly, we need to get the set of voting rules that people believe elections are fair here in the country and all sides and address these issues.
And I think it'd be good to get a bipartisan commission to do it, but we are for the right to vote is paramount to being an American. Thank you.
Brian, the next is really a comment as opposed to a question, but was asked to be read. VAC has done well in 2021 in this pandemic mess in 202021. The hard and harsh lessons of banking, oversight and consequent regulations learned in 2008 and 2009 has proven resilient and well applied through the pandemic. Nothing has been easy about all of this for any one of our nation. You've done well, carry on and continue to serve us well throughout.
I'll thank you for those comments. On behalf of the team, I thank you for the comments who did marvelous work just for our clients, our customers and our communities during this time and deliver for you to our shareholders. The lessons of capital liquidity, etcetera, that were learned out of the financial crisis and the mortgage crisis and the over borrowing crisis it felt the bank industry through this crisis has been there to support.
Thank you. Brian, the next question, will the Board of Directors commit to not coercing our employees into getting the COVID vaccine?
Our job is to educate our teammates to have them take care of them and their families. And so we've provided lots of fact sheets and information. And so we will continue to educate them about the benefits of getting vaccinated today getting vaccinated to preserve the safety of their family. We have over the last year, done a lot of work with our 200,000 people plus their 600,000 or 700,000 people that we insure on top of that to try to help those teammates through the vagaries of this disease. And we will support people who can get vaccinated by trying to get them the facts on how to do it and the education and let them make their decision.
Thank you, Brian. The next question is from Gilbert Lau. His question requests for the executives of Bank of America to drop the mask mandate or at least have a vote to decide to drop the mask mandate because the must be overturned and is tyrannical. So
that was the gist of the question, Brian. We are following our medical advisors and the CDC's rules and suggestions about how to conduct business when you have hundreds of thousands of customers come through our retail team, retail stores every day, and we'll continue to follow that guidance based on their advice to protect our teammates, to protect the customers and to protect the assets of the company, Frank. You're reading that, David. Okay.
Brian, we have a question here from Ben Cushing on behalf of the Sierra Club, which is America's oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization. The Sierra Club notes that Bank of America has committed to achieve net 0 emissions from its financing portfolio before the year 2,050. However, this pledge does not go nearly far enough or fast enough to address the firm's role in the climate crisis. A recent report showed that Bank of America provided $199,000,000,000 in lending and underwriting to the fossil fuel industry, making it the world's 4th largest funder of fossil fuels in 5 years since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, which the firm claims to support. How does Bank of America plan to take action this year to begin phasing out fossil fuel financing in order to provide a credible pathway to reaching the firm's long term climate commitment?
Well, we have made the net zero commitments by 2,050. We are looking to have specific pathways by portfolios in connection with the guidelines of the United Nations and other bodies outside our company and we'll continue to operate our company. This will take a transition and we have helped companies make that transition, including companies engaged in production use and of energy, broadly and including fossil fuels. And so those companies are making great gains and you can read about them every day and our job is to help them make those transitions. And our company has worked in the leadership here of driving not only our own commitments, but also working with other colleagues to help make those commitments understood so more people can join them and help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Brian, the next question I'm going to direct to our Corporate Secretary. Mr. Jeffries, can you track the number of minutes a meeting attendees stays logged into the annual meeting?
No, we cannot track that.
And then the next question, how many shareholders are attending this meeting who are not employees or directors?
There are approximately 375 shareholder attendees. We can't distinguish between employees and non employees, so 375. And then there are also 375 guests at the meeting.
Thank you. Brian, the next question is what is the percentage of residential mortgage that you still have in forbearance? And if you know nationwide, what is the condition of commercial real estate vacancies? What are you doing with your own office space? Please highlight how the banks are in a better position this time.
And aside from your balance sheet, will the economy solve this? And where do you think weaknesses may exist?
I think there are lots of questions in that question. But in terms of consumer real estate, across all our portfolios, we have, I think, dollars 6,100,000,000 round numbers in forbearance, I think, is the total. That is several 100 of 1,000,000,000 of dollars of commercial real estate loans and home equity loans. So it's down to a small balance in those due to the responsible growth across the last decade and those forbearance commitments are well secured by the consumer real estate. And as you know, house price appreciation continues now.
When you go to commercial real estate, it's going to be years to play this out in the sense that we were already repositioning our real estate moving to high performing workplaces and things like that. The statistics that I gave you earlier represent that. We have to see what our teammates want to do in terms of working. We are a work from office company That may be in center cities, it may be in suburban office space, but we are work from office company. We've been clear with that.
We have always had a work from home program, but this is but it requires great discipline to execute on that appropriately. And we as we said earlier in the Solentum Day, we're moving there after Labor Day as long as the virus and vaccine pass stays steady. The impact of commercial real estate broadly for us is a small part of our portfolios in the affected areas of hotels and things like that. We have very limited exposure. We put up reserves against it.
We feel very comfortable again due to response we've over the last decade total commercial real estate exposures, I don't know, 6% of the portfolio or something like that, maybe 7%, it's down from the last crisis, last recession in United States. So we feel good about what we've done more broadly. I think there's lots of equity on the sidelines, rates are still low. So we'll see it all play out. And I think also the last point I'd make is people we have 10 year leases in place.
It's not like we could change our commercial real posture overnight, but we work at it every day. And I think we're not alone in that. So I think people will realize this will probably take a decade to play through in terms of the commercial real estate office market, in terms of retail markets and things. Those trends were going on for years and maybe they were accelerated by the crisis by the pandemic, but it's been an inextricable trend to have less retail sales at physical. But we would note that just as April came, you saw people going back in stores and physically buying stuff and clothing stores and stuff at a pretty good clip over the prior months.
So it will be a chance to see how this plays out.
Thank you. The next question, Brian, what advice has Warren Buffett given you in running this company? He gives me one piece of advice, run it well. Thank you. And then, Brian, there's a question on governance.
How can Board of Directors be independent if they own Bank of America shares or long term look for a long term comp?
I think that you want shareholders aligned of management and the Board to be aligned to shareholders and ownership of shares is one of the way that alignment occurs. So I'm not sure it has any conflict of interest. I'd rather have a Board and a management team and an employee base, including all our employees, don't stock in the company because then they have the interest of the shareholders front and center as their shareholders also. You might note that over the last 4 years that we've done 4 different broad based incentive plans beginning after tax reform in 2017. Other people did it once, we did it 4 times.
And most recently, this in the Q1, all those include cash for people at a certain amount of compensation, dollars 100,000 generally in the most recent and stock for everyone else. And my teammates write me notes every day that they appreciate being stockholders and want to drive this company to great success because of it.
Thank you, Brian. The next question, what are your goals and the percentage increase of tangible book value each year?
The idea is to grow it by 6%, 7%, 8%. I mean, it really depends on what's going on in the environment, and we've been able to do that. And if you see it embedded in our performance metrics for the very senior executives to receive their half their compensation or 40% in the case of my direct report. So we are interested to align. The interest to tangible value has grown in the company
management. With the incident of Archegos, how does BAC protect against this type of risk?
I think our team led by Jeff Greener and Tom Montag and Jimmy Demar in the trading business continues to always be paying attention to the risk limits that the Board of Directors sets. The Board of Directors sets a set of risk limits for the company that then cascade all the way through the trading desk level. Those limits are minded carefully, the amount of leverage, amount of average ADVs, trading daily volume and things like that. And so the team has done a good job of managing the company. I think across the volatility from last year this year, if you think about the earnings we've had, but more importantly, even with some extreme volatility in interest rate environments and credit.
The markets team has done a great job and I think made money all but a very small handful of trading days in the last 200 plus trading days in the last year.
Thank you. Brian, we invest in several different industries and efforts in building communities. How do you determine or set internal requirements for sustainability for support from the bank?
Well, I think we have an ESG committee that consists of the lines of business and other teammates in our areas that focus on this, our ESG group and areas like that are our teammate that works on environmental matters. And they set set goals and parameters of which we're willing to do business. So that committee works with us to set goals to the $1,000,000,000,000 is based on that committee in lines of business establishing goals that they believe they can hit over the next are committed to hit frankly over the next decade. And that's how we do it. So we're built through a committee and a structure that's explicit led by Amp Panukin and Tom Montag and various other colleagues that is not it's not left a mystery.
It's an explicit commitment. Now where do we do it? Obviously, the mortgage area, I spoke earlier about our lending neighborhood lending commitment from $5,000,000,000 to $15,000,000,000 I talked about our last year alone $6,000,000,000 plus in not only mortgage lending, but also other types of community development lending. If you go to the environmental, we have major investments in solar and wind and other things to help the transition take place, and those provide tax benefits that we show you the effect of every quarter. And so it's really different depending on the industry, for lack of better term, that is the operating industry, but it's all based on our views.
It's a real business opportunity. So whether it's Alastair Borthwick in our middle market business or Matthew Koder in our large corporate business, they are after the business opportunity of helping companies make the transition that was mentioned earlier.
Thank you, Brian. The next question, why did Merrill Edge not allow customers to buy shares of companies such as GameStop in
January? I think you'd have to go and put your January mindset around it. And when there's certain volatility, we have to adjust accordingly and we did. And that's the decision we made to protect our the company and protect the clients and we made it.
Thank you. Brian, the next two questions relate to the PPP program with the government. Number 1, the bank appears to have applied a policy to its PPP application process of only taking applications from small businesses who do not have existing credit lines with other banks, did the bank reconsider this policy?
We a long time ago, it seems in the very first PPP wave to maintain order. We had 100,000 applications in the first 24 hours, if I remember right. We focused on our clients because frankly, other companies could focus on their clients and that was it. But at the end of the day, we've done 350,000 in the first few rounds and we've done about another 100 and 40,000 or so in the most recent round and we served all kinds of customers, but we started with customers of our company that were borrowing customers and then customers that have transactional and other relationships with us and we're able to serve them. And right now, the demand frankly has been running out in terms of there's money left at the SBA and we continue to get several 100 a day, but there's not a lot of demand left in the system.
And so the team the 10,000 plus teammates have worked at peak on this. They did a great job to deliver this in this society. This was multiple years of applications of any type of loan and multiple changes in programs and so we're proud of what we've done there and we're finishing up as we speak.
Brian, the second question around PPP is, did we change our forgiveness has PPP loan forgiveness changed between the 1st and second installments, of which there have now been 4, I guess.
So the rules of all these things continue to change in terms of the SBA issuing rules that we have to follow. And so we're heavily into the forgiveness now. I think we've processed 2 100 and 10 5,000 to 10,000 forgiveness application are processed through the SBA. So the rules change from time to time. We adjust the technology, we adjust the teammates and they go off and do it.
And again, on forgiveness, we've done a very good job. Like I said, we processed over 200,000 plus team clients through forgiveness already.
Thank you, Brian. The next question, where do you see mergers and advisories in the banking industry in 2021? And how will Bank of America respond?
Well, it will be business for our Investment Banking team and our Financial Institutions Group because for about 25 years or maybe or so, there has been no right for Bank of America to make a deposit acquisition in United States because we've been if you have more than 10 percent of deposits, you're not allowed to make an acquisition of another depository institution. And so we are not a buyer of depository institutions by law. It's not so the policy is by law. And so I think there'll be lots of consolidations by others. We will advise them and work with them to help make that happen.
And if they want to, our clients, but in terms of our participation in U. S, there's really nothing for us to do on depository acquisitions. It's not buying a
lot. Brian, the next question is on cryptocurrencies. What is Bank of America's strategy on accepting cryptocurrencies and adopting blockchain and smart contracts?
Well, on blockchain and smart contracts, I don't have the current number, but we have several 100 patents already. We are trying to we're applying the capabilities in our treasury services business, our transaction services business, where we support companies and we think there's usefulness of blockchain and others in areas like that, where there's information and money moving and being able to move it. In terms of cryptocurrency, we have a policy that we've stated and we haven't changed them. And but we always are looking at what's going on in the markets to understand both from the investment side and the transactional side, what's the interest of the customers out there and do we need to rethink our position. Importantly, the idea of digital movement of money is not something that We moved 65% of our consumer money, moved digitally this quarter or whatever in the quarter and has 99% of all the corporate money moves digitally.
So it's not a new idea to move digital money. Zelle payments are up, as I said earlier, 80% year over year continue to grow. We're bringing all the banks into that system but through their service providers and actually paying for them to get on the system, 4,000 banks have used the Zelle system. So, there's U. S.
Dollars and easily transacted in real time is being attached to it as we speak and those are powerful engines to make digital what is paper. But by this time tomorrow, there'll be another couple of $100,000,000 go out of the ATMs in cash and another couple of $100,000,000 go over the tower line in cash, meaning $100 bills, dollars 20 bills, dollars 50 bills, dollars 10 bills, etcetera. So the Americas still has a lot of cash going on and we continue to work with make other means of payment more beneficial to our customers.
Brian, all other questions at this point relate to personal nature for things that they need to contact company representatives for. But I do have one comment from a tennis enthusiast. Mr. Sashin would like to say great shareholder meeting. Congrats to Brian Moynihan and the BAC management team.
You run the company like Bjorn Borg. So with that, Brian, I am going to end the question session here. And just as a reminder, if you do have questions of a personal nature, please contact our company representatives as seen in the rule.
All right. Well, thank you. Thank you, Lee. And thanks for the last comment. At this point, there are no further questions.
That concludes today's meeting. On behalf of Jack Boveinger, who we really say thank you to Jack for the great stewardship he has had as Lead Independent Director for the last several years and to our new on behalf of our new incoming Lead Independent Director, Lionel Noel and the rest of our Board of Directors. They and our management team thank you for being a shareholder in our company and thank you for your support of our company. We look forward to seeing you next year. Thank you.
This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day.