This article, originally published at 6:13 p.m. on Wednesday, June 29, 2016, has been updated with comments from analysts.

Bank of America (BAC) - Get Report CEO Brian Moynihan has long promised investors that the company would return more capital to them as it grew stronger, but his plans were complicated by two consecutive fumbles on the Federal Reserve's annual stress tests.

So when the Charlotte, N.C.-based company aced this year's review, which is crucial to winning regulatory approval of the payouts, the bank announced its plans to raise the quarterly dividend by 50% and start a $5 billion stock-buyback plan in short order. Within five minutes, in fact.

The dividend, cut from 64 cents a share to a penny during the financial crisis, had been raised to 5 cents in 2014; Wednesday's increase takes it to 7.5 cents a share, starting in the third quarter of this year. The buyback is more than 50% larger than last year's, the company said.

"Over the last few years, we have significantly strengthened our company and increased our earnings as we execute a straightforward strategy focused on responsible growth," Moynihan said in a statement. "This improvement has allowed us to take a significant step toward returning more capital to shareholders."

Rafferty Capital Markets analyst Richard Bove, however, had expected the bank might boost its dividend even more.

"Obviously 50% is a big increase, but their dividend is extremely low," Bove said in an interview. "I think it's just a Machiavellian kind of thing, where if they blow out a 100% increase this year, the next year, they can only do 20%. But if they do 50% this year, they can do 50% next year. They're just trying to condition the market to expect a big dividend increase next year."

In the Fed's annual tests, dividends and buybacks are evaluated against banks' ability to withstand a potentially severe economic downturn afterward, an effort to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 financial crisis. After the collapse of investment bank Lehman Brothers that September froze global credit markets, the government spent billions of dollars shoring up finance companies to protect the broader economy.

Bank of America was among them, accepting a $45 billion bailout after then-CEO Kenneth Lewis' purchases of troubled lender Countrywide Financial and investment bank Merrill Lynch in the buildup to the crisis. Irate shareholders stripped Lewis of the chairman's title in 2009, and he stepped down at the end of the year, after the bank repaid the government.

Moynihan, his successor, faced investor pressure himself when the bank received only a conditional pass on last year's review and had to resubmit its payout plans because of weaknesses in its loss- and revenue-modeling as well as internal controls. The previous year, the bank had to resubmit the plan because capital ratios were misstated.

This time around, all six of the biggest banks' plans were approved, though Morgan Stanley's (MS) - Get Report pass was conditional. That may bolster investor confidence in the industry, which was shaken last week with Great Britain's decision to leave the European Union, a move that hammered the region's banks and roiled markets.

Most of Bank of America's rivals weren't far behind it in announcing payout plans. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) - Get Report , based in New York, will buy back as much as $10.6 billion of its stock in the year through June 30 and plans to maintain its current dividend of 48 cents a share in the third quarter.

Citigroup (C) - Get Report , which also received a $45 billion bailout during the 2008 crisis, said it will more than triple its quarterly dividend to 16 cents a share, pending board approval, and repurchase as much as $8.6 billion of its stock. The two moves together are valued at about $10.4 billion, the New York-based bank said.

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"We are pleased that today's result shows progress on two of our most important priorities -- to establish Citi as an indisputably safe and strong institution and to demonstrate our ability to consistently increase the amount of capital returned to our shareholders," CEO Michael Corbat said in a statement. "We remain intently focused on strengthening and improving Citi's capital planning process while delivering the returns that our shareholders expect and deserve."

New York investment bank Morgan Stanley said it planned to increase its stock buyback 40% to $3.5 billion, while boosting the dividend 33% to 20 cents a share. Rival Goldman Sachs didn't detail a plan that it said included repurchasing common stock, raising its dividend and possibly redeeming other securities.

"We remain focused on managing our resources, growing our client franchise, and generating superior returns for our shareholders while remaining well capitalized," CEO Lloyd Blankfein said.

The Fed's report on this year's review made clear that regulators focused on banks' assessments of risks unique to their particular companies and operations, rather than more theoretical measures, Anna Krayn, a senior director at Moody's Analytics, said in a telephone interview. 

That will likely be an important part of Fed stress tests in the future, regulators indicated. Another important consideration will be the banks' data-gathering and analysis capabilities said Ed Young, also a Moody's senior director. 

"If an unexpected event happens, firms are going to have to be able to react very quickly to dynamic changes in the market," he explained in the interview.

In the case of Britain's vote to leave the European Union, for example, a bank's senior managers would ideally be able to see the total risk to the firm's trading operations and credit lines from the move in real time and make any needed adjustments rapidly.

"We expect to see further investment in technology to be able to do that more efficiently," Young said. Simply doing it "is not going to be good enough," he added. "You have to do it efficiently. That should lead to better risk management."

Bradley Keoun and Ronald Orol contributed to this article.