The number of patents approved for Bank of America (BofA) rose in 2022, despite a 1% fall in the total patents approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office over the year.
Over the course of the year, 608 patents submitted by the bank were approved, a year-on-year increase of 19%. These patents represented areas including artificial intelligence, machine learning, information security, data analytics, mobile banking and payments.
Ranked by the Intellectual Property Association, BofA holds the highest number of granted patents among banks and financial services firms in the US. In 2022 it rose five places to 75th on the association’s list of the top 300 patent owners.
According to BofA, a key driver of the growth in its patent approval is the diversity of its workforce. The proportion of female inventors responsible for approved patents from the bank has risen to 26%, compared with a worldwide average of just 16.5%. And it reports that its 5387 patents last year originated from more than 6700 inventors across 42 states.
Andrew McKibben, international head of technology at BofA, says that the bank does not have an innovation lab committed to exploring new ways of solving a particular problem. Instead, he says, the culture of innovation is enterprise-wide: “By design, it's not siloed that one team or particular employee can invent new solutions. By leveraging all of our employees and their diverse perspectives, it better drives client-focused solutions. And we encourage that to be everyone’s team’s responsibility. Any team-mate can innovate and we support them with that.”
Technology and cybersecurity driven
Unsurprisingly, the information security category accounts for more than a quarter of all of BofA’s patents granted last year, reflecting the rising trend of data breaches in the financial services sector. A recent report by US cybersecurity specialist Akamai, for example, showed distributed denial-of-service attacks on financial services firms rose by 22% year on year.
One of the bank’s female inventors is deposits and payments integration executive Victoria Dravneek, who has filed 52 patents, 43 of which are focused on global treasury, fraud and digital banking. One of her recent patent publications concerns customisation of client interfaces within multiple banking channels.
Ms Dravneek leads a team responsible for new product development, where she says she is encouraged to deploy a start-up mindset “to identify new opportunities and new ways to leverage technology to help our clients better manage their financial lives”.
CBDCs call for innovation
Demand for banking innovation is predicted to increase for banks worldwide as plans for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) gather pace. February saw plans for a digital currency published in the UK by the Bank of England (BoE) and HM Treasury. A digital pound would be issued by the BoE and could be used by households and businesses for everyday payments in-store and online. If introduced, a digital UK currency would be interchangeable with cash and bank deposits, complementing cash.
While a decision has yet to be made to introduce a digital currency, a consultation paper is open for comments until June 7, when work will move on to a “design phase” which will look at the technology and policy requirements for a digital pound. “This will ensure that its development can be accelerated if a decision is taken to build it,” the BoE said in a statement.
Outlining the proposed platform model, the bank said that it would provide the central public infrastructure in the form of a ‘core ledger’ – a fast, resilient, secure technology platform – which would provide the minimum necessary functionality. Regulated private firms could then use this infrastructure to design innovative, user-friendly services and handle all customer-facing interactions.
