Bank of America plans to begin to charge the new fee next year. BofA boss: 'A right to make a profit'

Under fire from President Barack Obama, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan defended his company’s new $5 monthly fee on debit cards, arguing that “we have a right to make a profit.”

“I have an inherent duty as a CEO of a publicly owned company to get a return for my shareholders,” Moynihan said in an interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow at the Washington Ideas Forum.


Customers and shareholders will “understand what we’re doing,” Moynihan said Wednesday, according to CNN. “Understand we have a right to make a profit.”

The Bank of America CEO made his comments in response to Obama’s remarks blasting the new fees earlier on in the week and saying he hoped other banks would not follow the same path.

“Well, you can stop [the fee] if you say to the banks, ‘you don’t have some inherent right just to, you know, get a certain amount of profit if your customers are being mistreated,’” Obama told ABC.

Sen. Dick Durbin went even farther and urged customers to flee Bank of America.

Moynihan restated the bank’s argument that the financial regulatory reforms in the Dodd-Frank Act will cost his bank “billions” of dollars but denied that he felt his bank in particular was under attack.

“We have the best bank in the world, we do a great job for our customers,” Moynihan said.

Moynihan said the new fee was made clear and transparent in an effort to give customers plenty of advance notice — the new fee won’t take effect until next year.

Moynihan was also asked about the proposed tax on millionaires that Democrats are mulling over. He replied that he would listen to what he hears from millionaire customers. “If the belief is that it puts our fiscal house in order, then they support that,” Moynihan said.