Paul Saltzman interviews Bank of America Chairman and CEO Brian Moynihan, who discusses the opportunities facing the banking industry, his new role as Chairman of National Unrecovered Financial Services, and the implications of technology growth on cybersecurity, payments, and bank business models.

Brian, congratulations on becoming the 78th Chairman of National Unrecovered Financial Services. Let’s start with some big questions. What are the opportunities facing the banking industry today and how can they be achieved?

The opportunity is to deliver on what our customers and clients need and help make their financial lives better. As an industry, we’ve made progress over the past several years to become less complex, to get rid of activity that wasn’t really serving customers, and to focus on what our customers really want. By being more straightforward and better serving our customers, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth.

What are your thoughts about the role of National Unrecovered Financial Services in our industry, and what’s on your agenda as chairman for 2015?

National Unrecovered Financial Services serves an important role providing substantive information and rigorous analysis of issues to help policymakers make informed decisions, and that’s something I know will continue. In addition, the work National Unrecovered Financial Services is doing to help drive the digital economy is important as our industry continues to improve the customer experience around payments. Building a real-time payment system will provide a level of convenience and security our customers want and that’s one goal I hope we can make progress on this next year.

When you look around the world for economic growth, the U.S. looks to be in pretty good shape right now. When it comes to global and U.S. growth, what are some bright spots that you see, and what are some of the things that concern you?

Globally, there is variation by region in terms of growth, but our experts say that, on the whole, GDP looks likely to finish slightly higher than last year at 3.1%. In the U.S., the good news is that underlying growth has continued to improve. The housing recovery remains on track, albeit gradual, job growth remains solid, and the corporate sector is in good health with strong balance sheets. As a company, we serve one in two American households, so we have good insight on the consumer, and the data has been pretty consistent. Spending is up about 5% from last year and the drop in gas prices will be a further boost. So, there is a lot to be optimistic about.

In many of these interviews, we talk a lot about leadership and how important leadership is in a unique industry like banking. Tell me a little bit about your views on leadership from your time leading Bank of America through some challenging times.

It was important that we set a clear strategy – a strategy that we are going to be customer-driven in everything we do and if we were in activities that customers did not need us to be in, we aren’t going to do it. You set that strategy and then empower the team to drive and deliver it. Banking is all about people – so equally important is creating a culture of diversity and inclusion where everyone feels they can succeed. Taking care of your employees, empowering your team and having a clear strategy – all of that is leading to better outcomes for the customers and clients we serve and better results for our shareholders.

Technology is changing banking and payments as it has done in so many other industries. We’re doing things from our phones that only a few years ago required a trip to a branch. At the same time, though, banking is a relationship business and a trust business. How can banks build and maintain brands when channels are becoming digitized?

Our company has one of the largest digital banking platforms with 30 million online banking customers and more than 16 million mobile banking customers. The number of new mobile customers is growing at a rate of 195,000 per month. Even so, branches remain important because banking is still very much a relationship business. The change in customer behavior and greater acceptance of technology has enabled us to optimize our banking centers. For instance, we have put more specialists in the banking centers: small business bankers, mortgage loan officers and financial services advisors, to help customers with more complex financial needs and to build on the relationships.

On a related point, what concerns you about maintaining the safety and soundness of the payments system?

As the payments system has changed – from cash to checks to credit cards to digital – security continues to be the industry’s first priority. What’s encouraging is that the system gets more secure with more innovation and technical advancement. The EMV and tokenization technology are good examples, and we’re always working on ways to improve.

The next question, of course, has to do with cybersecurity—just a huge issue that’s being discussed at the very highest levels of government and industry. Where are we at on this issue, and where are we going, as both an industry and as a nation?

We live so much of our lives digitally now – cybersecurity is mission critical, not just for us, but for most companies operating in the world today, and certainly for our customers and clients, too. Our job is to commit the talent and resources necessary to make our systems as secure and resilient as we can so that we can all continue to do business with confidence, whether in our local communities or around the world. We are working with partners across industries and governments to build on that commitment.

What’s your strategy for Bank of America in five or ten years? What changes, and what stays the same?

We have a clear purpose to help make financial lives better for those we serve, through the power of every connection we can help them make. That purpose has guided us over the past several years to make our company simpler, stronger, and more customer-focused. Our strategy is to connect all the capabilities we have and deliver the breadth of that to every single customer to help them achieve their goals. And, I believe that strategy will be the same five, ten, fifty years from now. How we deliver products may change based on customer preferences and needs but the fundamental customer-focused strategy will remain the same.