Moynihan says Bank of America added 1,000 consultants on Mythos work

On Bank of America’s third-quarter 2026 earnings call, held 14 October, chair and CEO Brian Moynihan told analyst Mike Mayo that a couple of hundred million plus in the quarter covered two jobs: anti-money-laundering remediation and “remediation for the Mythos implementation.” He said the bank added 1,000 extra staff for the Mythos work, consultants kept out of headcount, and that he expects those remediation costs to run down. The wording is in the bank’s webcast transcript, linked from investor relations. The earnings release does not mention Mythos or the consultants.

What he said on the call

Mayo asked where AI deployment could take the bank. Moynihan set up the expense math first. Year over year, he said, the total expense base was up $1.2 billion and headcount was down 3,000 in round numbers. Of that $1.2 billion, about $450 million was wealth-management incentives tied to revenue, and about $300 million was in the markets business. That left about $400 million, “of which a couple of hundred million plus in the third quarter were 2 things: remediation for the AML and remediation for the Mythos implementation.”

On the Mythos piece he said: “we expect that the Mythos remediation costs run down, because we added 1,000 extra staff to work on that, not in the headcount but in consultants.” The transcript does not split the “couple of hundred million plus” into an AML dollar figure and a Mythos dollar figure. It also does not say the flaws were exploited, and it does not say customers were harmed.

On the same answer he separated that bill from the bank’s own AI projects: “about 130 different projects implemented,” with benefits he expects to go from “$250 million, $300 million this year to $700 million next year.” Those are his project figures, not the remediation line.

A second “couple hundred million,” about the settlement only

Earlier on the same call, John McDonald of Truist asked about orders from the OCC and FinCEN. Moynihan’s answer is about that settlement, not about Mythos. He said, “Just for example, this quarter, a couple hundred million dollars plus in remediation costs for that effort. So, it’s been substantial in thousands of employees.” The transcript does not say whether that example is the same dollars or a separate running cost. The two lines are not added together here.

The release, in endnote B, records a different $1.2 billion: on 13 October 2026 the OCC and FinCEN announced consent orders on parts of the bank’s Bank Secrecy Act, anti-money-laundering, and sanctions programs, and the bank accrued $1.2 billion of non-tax-deductible noninterest expense for the civil money penalties. That penalty is the settlement charge. It is not the “couple of hundred million plus” operating line in the Mayo answer. The call’s other $1.2 billion is the year-over-year increase in the expense base, which Moynihan then split into incentives, markets, and the remediation remainder.

What the CNBC interview adds

CNBC’s 14 October story, by Hugh Son, reports a separate interview with Moynihan after the earnings release. The contractor sentence CNBC quotes is: “We put on 1,000 contractors to help us do the patching work in the second quarter, and those people remain here today, helping us, on top of the 3,000 people we have in that area.” The 3,000 in that sentence is staff already in the patching area. It is not the call’s “head count was down 3,000,” which is the company-wide change. CNBC also quotes him: “Once you patch, you don’t have to patch as much. … The pipeline moves through,” and “We’ve got to stay ahead of them, and we’ve got to be mindful that the people doing the software development are the people trying to sell us the services.”

CNBC’s own summary says the bank moved to patch proprietary and vendor software flaws exposed by models including Anthropic’s Mythos, and that Mythos “was released to a small group of banks, technology firms and government agencies in April.” Those points are CNBC’s account. They are not in the transcript. CNBC also writes the project savings as $300 million this year to $700 million in 2027, dropping the transcript’s “$250 million, $300 million.”

IT Pro reprints that contractor quotation and attributes it to the CNBC interview. TNW says it has not independently verified the numbers, and writes “about 1,000,” looser than the call’s 1,000.

What Anthropic has said Mythos is used for, elsewhere

The bank’s documents opened here do not describe the Mythos system. Anthropic’s own description of using models including Claude Mythos to scan open-source projects, a different setting from this remediation, is in an 8 October account of OSS Scanner. That page is not a description of Bank of America’s code.

What the call will support

The transcript supports the 1,000 consultants, the combined third-quarter remediation line, and the expectation that Mythos remediation costs run down. It does not price Mythos alone, and it does not say the flaws were exploited or that customers were harmed. The 3,000 patching staff, the second-quarter start, and the proprietary-and-vendor framing are CNBC’s report of the interview.