Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), Wells Fargo & Co (WFC): 7 Things You Need to Know About Bank of America Corp. (BAC)

Even Citi, which came out of the financial crisis in only mildly better shape than Bank of America Corp., grew its fourth-quarter revenue by 5% and its net income by 25.1%. Bank of America Corp. dug itself into the mother of all holes in the housing boom, and it’s still not clear when — or how exactly — it’s going to get itself out.

6. Horrid return on equity
Return on equity measures the amount of net income a company makes with shareholder money and is a popular metric for measuring banks.

ROEs occasionally made it up into 20% and beyond territory in the run-up to the financial crisis, and while no bank investor can honestly expect performance like that anymore, they can certainly expect better than 1.79%, which is Bank of America Corp.’s ROE.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM)’s ROE is a respectable 10.98%. Wells’ ROE is an even more respectable 12.89%. Even Citi can manage a 4.27% ROE.

7. Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) is still too big to fail
As far as pluses and minuses go, I offer up this up in the Bank of America Corp. plus column. Like for its big-banking brethren, being too big to fail (TBTF) means never having to say you’re insolvent. For Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) stockholders, this means that the government — a.k.a., the American taxpayer — implicitly guarantees its investments.

How great is it to know that you never risk completely losing the money you’ve invested? To be fair, of course, this applies to other TBTF institutions as well, such as JPMorgan, Citi, Wells, and pretty much all of the 18 banks the Fed ran through its 2013 stress tests.

Foolish bottom line
Bank of America Corp. has come a long way since the financial crisis, but still has a ways to go.

I realize this isn’t groundbreaking analysis, and that many people who are invested in the superbank would agree with me, at least to some extent. Where we would disagree sharply, however, is in the estimation of the distance the bank still has to go to return to some steady, reliable degree of normalcy.

The article 7 Things You Need to Know About Bank of America originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor John Grgurich owns shares of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Follow John’s dispatches from the bleeding heart of capitalism on Twitter @TMFGrgurich. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

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