A technology summit hosted by the country’s second-biggest bank not only offers it a chance to scout for potential partners – it might also lead the bank to shift gears on a particular tech initiative.
That’s according to Hari Gopalkrishnan, Bank of America’s chief technology and information officer, who will be one of the bank leaders and top technologists at the lender’s 15th annual Technology Innovation Summit in San Francisco on Oct. 7.
The invitation-only event connects about 500 tech company founders and investors with leaders from the bank’s global technology unit as well as its technology investment banking and capital markets divisions.
BofA’s leadership team gets exposure to fintechs and other upstarts in artificial intelligence, data and analytics, enterprise infrastructure, information security, fintech and software development, Gopalkrishnan said. About one-fifth of the 7,000 companies that have taken part in the event over the past 15 years have become BofA vendors.
“It becomes a great way to figure out who else is innovating out there, learn from them, give them our feedback, and eventually, if it's appropriate, partner with them,” Gopalkrishnan said in an interview.
The event offers the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank an opportunity to hear how tech up-and-comers are thinking about problem-solving, which helps inform the bank’s leadership on how it can address issues, he said.
The $3.5 trillion-asset bank spends almost $14 billion on technology each year, including about $4 billion on new initiatives, including AI. BofA CEO Brian Moynihan has said the bank plans to double its AI budget next year.
For tech companies, the event offers a look at what’s needed beyond the startup phase, he said.
“The flip side of it is, we actually get to talk to these people about [it takes] to take the stuff they're building and implement it at scale at a large enterprise?” Gopalkrishnan said.
In many cases, tech founders “haven't thought about, how do you deal with security at scale? How do you deal with multilingual issues when you cross geographical boundaries?” he said.
Educating those companies’ leaders enables them to hone their products, and perhaps become bank partners, Gopalkrishnan said. That engagement leads to a better product, “because we sat in a room and articulated to them what we needed it to do,” he said.
Among past participants, data platform Redis and business intelligence software Tableau – now owned by Salesforce – have each become bank partners.
At the summit, bank leaders might ask a group of companies how the lender can improve software development for its coders, and firms focused on that might weigh in on risk management, testing or modernization, he said.
“What that gives us is a very comprehensive view of, what is the world thinking about this beyond what we think about it in our house?” he said. “That has helped us go back and inform our strategy.”
That input may lead the bank to shift gears based on where the industry is moving, he said. “Both sides have learned a lot,” he said.
One session covers how firms can sell to Wall Street, helping young companies understand how they can be a better provider for regulated industries. The concept of governance – whether for cross-border data protection AI models or third-party risk – tends to be something startups haven’t given much thought to, he said.
AI will remain a big focus at this year’s summit, and Gopalkrishnan is eager to connect with companies employing the latest capabilities which could help the bank further optimize software engineering and automate infrastructure management, as well as counter the risks of AI.
Payments is another area of perennial interest, given the bank’s presence in global money movement; and marketing and personalization are also on Gopalkrishnan’s watch list.
