named Erica . It can do all the basics for our clients and customers , like tell them their balance , get them their routing number or pay a bill for them . But , importantly , Erica is all proactive . It can reach out to help if it sees spending patterns that may make you feel like you ’ re going to run out of money soon . Or if a merchant charges you twice for the same item . Or if a bill is running higher than normal . There are 17 million Erica users , up from zero three years ago .
And we apply that same approach on our corporate side . Using artificial intelligence , we can do peer benchmarking and cashflow forecasting for our clients . This allows them to make predictive forecasts for cash flow needs they have over the next 24 months based on dated society .
Financial innovation we know is a means by which we [ Bank of America ] can help millions of Americans connect to the economy and provide them with the tools to help them achieve their financial goals . That kind of financial planning — embedded in our new product just launched in October , called Life Plan — gives the power to a client to select what ’ s important to them , personalize their savings and financial planning around it and get the results and insights both through high touch or high tech . In just two and a half months , we ’ ve seen 2.4 million Life Plans created by our clients . To help clients manage their budgets , we also added Balance Assist , a low-cost , digitalonly overdraft to payday loan . A client can borrow up to $ 500 for a $ 5 flat fee . Our Safe Balance checking account allows people to eliminate overdrafts that they just can ’ t occur .
These investments in technology have enabled us to be responsive to the rapidly changing needs of our clients . That ’ s also been key in this pandemic . As the health crisis hit , we saw a spike in digital adoption among our Baby Boomer and senior clients — cohorts that had not used our services this way before . They reached for a reliable way to do banking when they couldn ’ t go outside . And , as one client shared last spring , “ I ’ m a 75-year-old senior in New York , currently sheltering in place at home . I received a few checks , and I needed to deposit them so I could pay my bills . I heard about a way to deposit using my iPhone , so I decided the time had come to learn how to do it .” And that ’ s how customer behavior changes .
Erica also learned 60,000 new pandemicrelated intents within days , changing its behavior based on what was going on in the environment .
Now , financial innovation doesn ’ t just apply to the client experience . It also works for our internal platforms . These engines of our operations and engines of our capabilities are critical and benefit from sustained innovation . The infrastructure we built gave us the ability to rapidly transition the majority of our global workforce — 90 %— to remote posture . 100,000 people received computers , enabled those computers and got back to work in four weeks during the start of the crisis .
Innovation remains embedded in how we work across enterprise . We deliver our programming with agile techniques , and that has new software delivered continuously at all times . In 2020 , we launched 5,000 + projects — more than 30 million development hours . Innovation is a part of who we are ; it ’ s in our culture . We have the largest intellectual property portfolio in financial services : 2,800 + granted patents , 400 patents granted alone just last year .
There ’ s an innovation side that people often overlook when they think about new technology and applications . It ’ s called innovation of process . Making things simpler and easier is a way to get things done well . That helps us drive operational excellence , which helps us make additional investments in our teammates , our capabilities and our communities we serve around the world .
In 2020 , we took some of that savings and invested heavily in other areas . We invested in our employees , enhancing our benefits to support them through the health crisis , and moving to a $ 20 starting minimum salary . We invested in our clients ’ capabilities with health and safety measures and new digital offerings . And , importantly , especially when the issues of racial justice emerged in America , we committed to $ 1 billion to help in that matter , including everything from jobs to PPE to help these communities fight off this healthcare crisis .
Innovation , for me , is what we have to do . It ’ s what we have to do to have a great company and run the company well . In closing , I ’ d like to thank all my teammates at Bank of America who do all the work and take all these innovations and do a great job for our customers with them . I ’ d like to thank again the Museum for this honor , and for the work the Museum does to support and celebrate our industry .
DR . RICHARD SYLLA Former Chairman , Museum of American Finance
Congratulations to our honorees . I extend personal thanks to Roger Ferguson for his careful shepherding of a great company , TIAA , for many years . As a young professor in the 1970s , I began to accumulate retirement funds in TIAA . The Dow was then less than 1,000 and now it ’ s over 30,000 . As a result , I ’ m having a comfortable retirement . The power of compound interest is something more people , especially young people , need to learn and appreciate .
I also congratulate Brian Moynihan , whose shepherding of Bank of America I have followed over the past decade . He has shown me and others that true innovation sometimes consists of getting back to the basics of service to customers , clients , employees and communities . It ’ s the type of innovation too little appreciated .
My 30-year affiliation with the Museum began in 1990 , shortly after John Herzog founded the Museum . I had come to NYU to teach and write about financial history . John and I met and quickly discovered that we were birds of a feather in our desire to explain to a wide audience the historic role of finance in building our country . So John Herzog , my friend and benefactor of so many of us , I salute you for your foresight in founding the Museum .
It was a great honor for me to succeed John as the chair of the Museum ’ s Board
www . MoAF . org | Winter 2021 | FINANCIAL HISTORY 9