By: Robert J. Terry

With apologies to Jerry Maguire, the feel-good banking mantra of the day might be described as help us help you.

Or, to borrow another cliche, no pain no gain.

Bank of America offered fresh evidence Tuesday of how shifting its consumer banking strategy away from penalties and fees would hit its bottom line. The new strategy will be “less about selling products and more about deepening relationships with clients,” CEO Brian E. Moynihan told CNBC in an interview pegged to the bank’s third-quarter earnings report.

Charlotte, N.C.-based BofA, Maryland’s dominant bank, lost $7.65 billion during the quarter, due largely to a charge related to credit and debit card reform legislation passed over the summer. Excluding that charge, BofA earned $3 billion.

Its new approach was also described in a statement as a “relationship enhancement strategy.”

Analysts of course quickly weighed in, calling it the end of free checking and an ushering in of more fees for more customers. As John Carney pointed out on CNBC’s “NetNet” blog, this “new egalitarianism” shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Bank of America bears costs to provide banking services to customers and has a duty to return value to shareholders,” he writes. “It has to seek income and profits for these activities. The fees were never going to go away: they were just going to be redistributed.”

New consumer-banking regulations, along with new customer policies at Bank of America, have lowered fees charged to customers, from overdraft fees to late-payment penalties. The bank said in July its new policies would reduce its fee revenue by about $500 million a quarter. BofA investors have complained the bank isn’t doing enough to make up for the lost income.

Give it a few months and see how these relationships start to pay off.