An apparent communications blunder inside Bank of America forced the lender to shelve a plan to buy back shares and boost its dividend for the first time since 2008, another setback for chief executive Brian Moynihan's efforts to escape the long shadow of the financial crisis.

The second-largest US bank by assets Monday said it discovered a mistake in certain figures submitted to the Federal Reserve for the regulator's annual "stress tests" of major US financial institutions. The error leaves the Charlotte, North Carolina bank with $4 billion less in capital than it thought it had. The bank had been making the same calculation error since 2009, according to a person close to the bank.