Toronto-Dominion Targets New York, Miami in Commercial-Product Expansion
May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Walter Owens, head of commercial banking at TD Bank Group, talks about credit markets and borrowing by businesses. Owens speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)
Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) will try to boost commercial banking in markets including New York, Boston, Washington and Miami as Canada’s second-largest lender expands its U.S. consumer-banking network.
“How many banks get to call Boston, D.C. and Miami emerging-growth markets?” Walter Owens, Toronto-Dominion’s head of U.S. commercial banking, said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg’s New York headquarters. “You only have to take a small amount of share and it’s a tremendous growth rate for the bank.”
Toronto-Dominion has spent more than $25 billion during the past seven years building a U.S. consumer-banking network from Maine to Florida. The Toronto-based lender is using its Aaa long-term rating from Moody’s Investors Service to help build relationship with clients, Owens said.
“It’s really our ability to bring the entire bank to a customer,” Owens said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “The banking business, especially on the commercial side, is a local business, and we’re capable of bringing a relationship with a seasoned banker who’s a decision maker right to a customer’s doorstep.”
Owens, 50, said that each location it opens includes a team of commercial bankers that target community businesses. The bank is also offering services from its Toronto-based TD Securities investment bank to 32,000 U.S. commercial clients, such as syndicated lending and interest-rate swaps.
U.S. personal and commercial banking accounted for 25 percent of Toronto-Dominion’s C$5.46 billion in revenue in the latest quarter. The bank doesn’t break out U.S. commercial banking as a separate business.
Owens, who joined Toronto-Dominion in 2008 from CIT Group Inc. (CIT), where he served as president of corporate finance, said the plan is to cross-sell more products to commercial clients from the current level of 2.8 products per customer. He didn’t give a specific target.
Part of that increase will come from the bank’s $6.3 billion purchase of auto lender Chrysler Financial Corp., which closed last month, Owens said.
“We’re pretty excited about what we can do around that,” said Owens, who cited cash management, insurance and wealth management as examples of potential products.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sean B. Pasternak in Toronto at spasternak@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net; David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page