Alastair Borthwick
Chief Financial Officer at Bank of America
...will materialize. And this now includes three interest rate cuts, starting in September, another in November, and one more in December. And the waterfall shows an estimated impact of those rate cuts to our quarterly NII.
The next couple categories are a result of natural management of interest rate risk in a balance sheet mixed with fixed-rate assets and variable-rate assets. And our balance sheet is split roughly half and half. So we take in liquidity from customers that we use to fund our assets, and then we store excess liquidity in cash and securities. We have fixed assets that mature and pay down, and those supply cash that then gets put back to work on the balance sheet and reprices over time.
And we have two basic categories of fixed assets that mature and pay off, and those are securities and loans. On securities, you can see we've got about $10 billion a quarter of cash coming off of our securities portfolio, and we gain roughly 300 basis points of improvement on those assets when we put that money back on the balance sheet.
On loans, between resi, mortgage, and auto, we've got another roughly $10 billion, which reprices with a little less yield improvement than securities. And between the securities and loans, we expect a fixed-rate asset repricing adds about $300 million to our quarterly rate of NII as we get to the fourth quarter.
On the variable rate asset side, and to protect from down moves in rates, we hedge some of that with cash flow swaps. And those typically roll off in any given quarter and get replaced over time. So included in the cash flow hedges is an impact of cessation of BSBY as an alternative rate. If you recall, we took a charge in the fourth quarter of '23. It was $1.6 billion. And we said that would come back to us through time. And beginning in November, we start to see the benefit coming back into NII. And in Q4, that's about $200 million. That Q4 partial quarter benefit will grow by a slightly smaller sequential NII benefit in Q1 '25. And then it begins to taper off heading into 2026.
In addition, we've got about $150 billion of received fixed cash flow hedges, protecting us from short rate moves moving over. Most are hedging floating rate commercial loans. And the cost of those hedges is reported as contra revenue in commercial loan interest income. These hedges have a weighted average life of just over two years. And they've got an average fixed rate of approximately 250 basis points.
So starting in the second half of 2025, we begin to get some additional NII tailwind, because the cash flow hedges with lower fixed rate likes where we receive, those will begin to roll off, and will likely replace those at higher current market rates at the time. The actual size of the tailwind we'll get from the expiration of those swaps will obviously be highly dependent on the level and the shape of the yield curve at the time of those maturities. And that stretches out over the course of the next four years.
Okay, a couple other points to make. You'll note we don't expect much movement around our modestly, liability sensitive global markets NII activity. And lastly, our forward view has an expectation of low single-digit growth in loans, low single-digit growth in deposits, with continued slowing of rate paid movement through the back half of 2024. And you can see our expectation of the combined impact here as well. This last element is the one that has the most potential variability. And obviously, it will depend upon actual deposit and loan growth, and pricing and rotation.
Okay, let's turn to expense and we'll use slide 11 for the discussion. We reported $16.3 billion of expense this quarter. And that's more than $900 million lower than Q1, which included $700 million for the FDIC special assessment. Not including the FDIC assessment, expenses were lower than Q1 by $229 million, driven by seasonally lower payroll tax expense. Compared to Q2 '23, we're up less than 2%. And that increase is equal to the incentives paid for improved fee revenue. Incentives for our GWIN business alone are up $200 million year-over-year. And that's obviously an expense we're happy to pay when we have a 14% improvement in fees for assets under management.
Our second quarter headcount number included welcoming a diverse class of nearly 2,000 summer interns we hope will join us over the course of the next year or two upon their graduation. And absent those interns, our headcount fell by nearly 2,000. In the third quarter, we expect to add approximately 2,500 college graduates for full time. More than -- and that's from more than 120,000 applications received, showing that we remain an employer of choice for talented young people. Expense levels for the rest of 2024 are expected to bounce around this second quarter level, given the higher fee revenue and investments made for growth.
So let's now move to credit and we'll turn to slide 12. There was little change in our asset quality metrics this quarter. Provision expense was $1.5 billion. That was $189 million higher than Q1, driven by a smaller reserve release in Q2. Net charge offs of $1.5 billion were little changed, with a small increase in credit card, mostly offset by lower commercial real estate office charge offs. On a weighted basis, we remain reserved for an employment rate of nearly 5% by the end of 2025, compared to the most recent 4.1% rate reported. The net charge off ratio was 59 basis points, largely unchanged for Q1.
On slide 13, we highlight more credit quality metrics for both our consumer and commercial portfolios. Consumer net charge-offs increased by a modest $31 million versus the first quarter from the flow-through of higher late-stage credit card delinquencies from Q1. Highlighting the change in direction of delinquencies, consumer 90-day plus delinquencies declined in 2Q by $57 million. Commercial net charge-offs were relatively flat as lower commercial real estate losses were mostly offset by a small increase in other commercial loans. Our office losses went from $304 million in Q1 to $226 million in Q2. Other commercial real estate loan losses were simply one hotel.
Okay, let's move to the various lines of business and some brief comments on their results, and I'll start on slide 14 with Consumer Banking. For the quarter, consumer earned $2.6 billion on continued strong organic growth, and reported earnings declined 9% year-over-year as revenue declined from lower deposit balances compared to the second quarter of last year. Customer activity showed another strong quarter, net new checking growth, another strong period of card openings, and investment balances for consumer clients which climbed 23% year-over-year to a new record $476 billion. That included 12 months of strong flows at $38 billion in addition to market appreciation over the time.
As noted earlier, loans grew nicely year-over-year from credit card as well as small business where we remained the industry leader. The team held expense flat year-over-year, reflecting good work with continued business investments for growth, offset by the operational excellence work to improve processes and move more of our transactions to digital. And as you can see on the appendix page 26, digital adoption and engagement continue to improve, and customer satisfaction scores remain near record levels, illustrating customer appreciation of our enhanced capabilities due to our continuous investment.
Moving to Wealth Management on slide 15, we produced good results, and those included good organic client activity, market favorability, and strong AUM flows, and this quarter also saw good lending results. Our comprehensive suite of investment and advisory services, coupled with our commitment to personalized wealth management planning and solutions, has enabled us to meet the diverse needs and aspirations of our clients.
Net income rose 5% from the second quarter of last year to a little more than $1 billion. In Q2, we reported revenue of $5.6 billion, growing 6% over the prior year. As Brian noted, a strong 14% growth in fee revenue from investment and brokerage services overcame the NII headwind. Expense growth reflects the fee growth and other investments for future. The business had a 25% margin, and it generated a strong return on capital of more than 22%. Average loans were up 2% year-over-year, driven by strong growth we're seeing in custom lending and a pickup in mortgage lending.
Both Merrill and the Private Bank continue to see good organic growth, and they produced strong assets under management flows of $58 billion since last year's second quarter, which reflects a mix of new client money as well as existing clients putting more of their money to work. I also want to highlight the continued digital momentum in this business, and you can find that on slide 28.
On slide 16, we turn to Global Banking results. And here, the business produced earnings of $2.1 billion, down 20% year-over-year, as improved investment banking fees and treasury services revenue were overcome by lower net interest income and higher provision expense. Revenue declined 6%, driven by the impact of interest rates and deposit rotation. The diversified revenue across products and regions reflects the strength of our Global Banking franchise.
In our GTS business, fees for managing the cash of clients offsets a lot of the NII pressure from higher rates, and clients are accessing the capital markets for their capital needs instead of borrowing. Investment Banking had a strong quarter, growing fees 29% year-over-year to nearly $1.6 billion, led by debt capital markets fees, mostly in leveraged finance and investment grade. And we finished the quarter strong, maintaining our number three investment banking fee position globally.
A solid start to 2024 has left us in a good position, with top three rankings now in North America, Latin America, and EMEA, and number six in APAC. And we're seeing strong performance in important industry groups as well. An increase in provision expense from last year was driven by the commercial real estate net charge-offs I discussed earlier, and expense increased 3% year-over-year, including continued investment in the business.
Switching to Global Markets on slide 17, I'll focus my comments on results, excluding DVA as I normally do. The team had another terrific quarter as we generated good revenue growth and achieved operating leverage and continued to deliver a solid return on capital. Earnings of $1.4 billion grew 19% year-over-year, and return on average allocated capital was 13%. Revenue, and again, this is ex-DVA, improved 10% from the second quarter of '23.
Focusing on sales and trading, ex-DVA, revenue improved 7% year-over-year to $4.7 billion, and that's the highest second quarter in over a decade. FICC was down 1%, while equities increased 20% compared to Q2 '23. FICC revenues remained strong, and versus Q2 '23, they were modestly lower, driven by a weaker macro trading quarter in FX and rates, and that was largely offset by better commodities and mortgage trading. Equities was driven by strong trading results in derivatives and cash equities. Year-over-year expenses were up 4% on revenue improvement and continued investment in the business.
Finally, on slide 18, all other shows a loss of $0.3 billion, and that was little changed year-over-year, as lower expense was offset by lower provision costs as a result of reserve changes. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 9%, and excluding discrete items and the tax credits related to investments in renewable energy and affordable housing, the effective tax rate would have been 25%.
And with that, I think we'll stop there, and we'll jump into questions.
