When Bank of America announced in 2019 that it was dropping the brand Merrill Lynch from some of its corporate operations, replacing it in some spots with the bank’s brand, it might have seemed like the end of an era. The Merrill Lynch name was more or less synonymous with Wall Street and was instantly recognizable as one of the most storied brands in wealth management.

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Outside branding experts have different views of Merrill’s strategy for evolving its naming convention. Changing a brand “isn’t just a marketing change,” says Binna Kim, co-founder and CEO of Group Vested, a portfolio of communications and marketing companies in the financial services sector. “It’s an emotional and cultural change, especially for advisors who’d long held on to the Merrill Lynch identity.”

She believes that the move to drop “Lynch” made sense as a step toward simplification and “creating more accessible wealth management brands,” but noted that the firm opted to “create some flexibility for some advisors for whom dropping the ‘Merrill Lynch’ in their brand identities may have felt like too much change for their clients.”

She expects that over time, more advisors will feel comfortable dropping the “Lynch” from their identities as the streamlined “Merrill” becomes the default brand.