Exclusive: TD's Josh Death on the patents that follow financial innovation

TD began building a formal patent program nearly two decades ago, well before intellectual property became a strategic priority for most banks.

Today, that early move places the firm among the most active patent filers in Canadian financial services, as banks increasingly treat innovation as both a competitive and defensive necessity.

Josh Death, Vice President of Intellectual Property and Ideation at TD, founded the patent office in response to the growing risk of US patent litigation.

The Office of Patentable Innovation was established within TD at a time when banking was not widely regarded as a source of technical innovation, said Death. Innovation was largely incremental, and intellectual property strategies were more commonly associated with technology, pharmaceutical or manufacturing sectors.

That has since changed. As digital systems have become central to financial services, patents have taken on a more strategic role, protecting internally developed technologies and turning innovation into a tangible asset. TD's patent portfolio is now viewed internally as an asset class in its own right, similar to how patents are treated in sectors such as telecommunications and semiconductors.

"The patent movement in banks really started with the smartphone, with the advent of everything digital," he said. "It was a bit slow for the banking space to move into patents and recognise the need for them, but we're at that time now."

According to Evident AI Patent Trends, released in November of last year, TD was the number one Canadian bank in patent filings over the past decade. The report cited the TD Invent strategy, their strategic umbrella to power purposeful innovation across the bank, as a streamlined way for employees, enterprise-wide, to share and develop ideas.

More than 1,200 TD employees have been trained and recognised as inventors, learning how to identify ideas that meet the threshold for patentability. That has allowed staff to pursue and protect concepts even before they become funded projects, capturing ideas about where technology may go next rather than where it is today.

Jesse Cresswell, Staff Machine Learning Scientist at Layer 6, leads the team responsible for developing AI tech solutions for the bank. He is what Death calls an "Elite Inventor" at TD.

Artificial intelligence has emerged as the next major focus, influencing everything from customer engagement to internal decision-making. 

Layer 6 developed a chatbot trained to interpret the Bank's customer service policies. According to TD, when a customer calls the Bank for account assistance, this AI technology helps customer service agents quickly locate the right policy information.

"The focus is on responsible AI so we can detect bias drift, there's transparency to ensure that the AI models are fair and equitable for both clients and colleagues. We have about 20 patents around that particular space,' said Death.

Across the sector, payments have also become a particularly active area for innovation. Real-time transactions, enabled by digital infrastructure and network improvements, have driven new approaches to how money moves. Insurance and wealth management have also seen increased experimentation, particularly in using data to personalise products or assess risk more dynamically. The insurance space remains another focus, with a ton of innovation, such as apps that track how you drive to give you a better discount. 

Banks today are competing not only with one another but also with fintechs and technology firms entering the financial services sector. Many of those companies arrive with extensive patent portfolios and a sophisticated understanding of how to use intellectual property strategically.

"A lot of them are tech companies who are very patent sophisticated and bring very large portfolios. Unfortunately, when patents get into play, you need to build your own patent currency to be able to participate, to mitigate your risk, provide freedom to operate, and again, you build that through protecting your own innovations."

Patents are not always used to exclude competitors outright. Instead, they provide leverage, protection and optionality in an environment where multiple players are innovating in overlapping areas, added Death. While many institutions pursue similar technologies, TD continues to frame its innovation around convenience and human-centred banking, using patents to protect developments that support that approach.

Looking ahead, Death expects TD to see a growing number of generative AI patent applications to become public as confidentiality periods expire. The bank has invested heavily in that area over the past two years, in line with wider industry trends.