Business Week
reports on Toronto-Dominion Bank's (TD) ongoing expansion into the
United States. A combination of strategic growth and emphasis on
customer service has put Toronto-based TD on track to become the first
Canadian bank to excel south of the border.
"At the main campus
of TD University in the Philadelphia suburb of Mount Laurel, N.J.,
bright green, red, blue, and yellow walls of varying angles brighten
dozens of classrooms, complete with mock teller stations and a bank
vault. A 400-seat theater hosts everything from pep rallies to
air-hockey tournaments. All of Toronto-Dominion Bank's (TD) 24,000 U.S.
employees must attend a five-hour training session here or at one of 47
other campuses across the country. "You have to buy 100 percent into
our culture," says Fred Graziano, president of U.S. consumer banking
for the Toronto-based company. "That's how we start them off and let
them know what we stand for."
"The training is a centerpiece of
Chief Executive Officer Edmund Clark's strategy to export the customer
service model that has made his bank the most profitable consumer
lender in Canada. If he makes it work, he'll do what most Canadian
banks have failed to do: post sustained profit in a market more than
four times the size of Canada's."
"The next step will be proving
the bank can consistently grow revenue in a marketplace in which the
competitive, economic, and regulatory backdrop appears much more
difficult than what TD faces at home," says Sumit Malhotra, a bank
analyst at Macquarie Capital Markets in Toronto."
"So far, Clark
is succeeding. Canada's second-biggest bank recorded C$282 million
($276 million) in U.S. consumer bank earnings in the most recent
quarter�a record for the fledgling division and almost a quarter of the
company's overall profit of C$1.18 billion. Toronto-Dominion said in
June that U.S. operations may have earnings of $1.6 billion a year
within three years."
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Business Week