Bill Goede, Tampa Bay market president for Bank of America, is the first to admit banks don't necessarily conjure up images of innovation.
"I get to talk a lot about banking but not technology, and when you think of technology, you don't think of the bank as a tech company," he said. "But the reality is, we are."
The company has steadily invested roughly $10 billion into innovation initiatives every year for the last five years. The Tampa office alone has received five patent approvals over the previous five years and applied for four additional patents in 2020 alone.
"We've been investing significant dollars into technology over the years and will continue to with technology and resources," Goede said. "It's getting our associates to think creatively about how we can improve our process, to ultimately improve the customer experience. If nothing else, what we've seen in the last 16 months is validation for the money we've invested in technology over all the other years, and need to continue in that, and think of new ways to innovate and improve the customer experience."
Tampa office, Bank of America patent applications and patents granted
2016: Two patents granted
2018: Three patents awarded
2020: Four applications filed
2017, 2019: Both had zero patent applications filed
Source: Bank of America
While the company does not have a standalone patent production or even innovation department, Goede said the company encourages its employees to continue thinking about innovation — and potentially patent — opportunities.
"We don't have an innovation team or lab — all our associates are thinking, 'What can we do to improve the customer experience?'" he said.
Along with essentially every other industry in the world, the banking industry saw a sizeable digital adoption during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. That adoption has now trickled into 2021, and Goede believes it has staying power.
"In 2020 and the first four months of 2021, you saw this pivot from digital adoption to digital demand," he said. "Individuals, customers and clients were getting comfortable with the technology available, and now the demand is that technology is always operational, and systems are safe and secure. That's an evolution of what we saw last year, and part of this year is how consumers can adapt to digital and what the expectations of that are."
Goede said that a critical piece of innovation for the bank is virtual check imaging, which allows users to deposit checks remotely through automation. There's also "Erica," a virtual financial assistant, which hit 20 million users in April of this year alone.
Goede, and the Tampa office of Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), do not have a goal for patent production. The way to measure innovation could be completely different in the next five years, he said.
"It's really driven by the needs and where we can make an improvement — as the demand grows, the need to stay ahead and anything further down the line is what it will continue to look like," he said. "It's not a huge leap to think how technology plays into our financial lives in the future. It's not a leap to say we may have to innovate in ways that we may not even think about right now. It could be a patent, a product or something completely different."
