Making Digital Feel Human at TD Bank

Jim Marous (0:00)

Banking has a speed obsession. The industry push is to open an account on a phone in three minutes or less with only three fields. TD Banks, Todd Purcell, wants to flip that on its head. But the line that stayed with me was this, he would have failed if he'd come in thinking digital only. And when I asked how TD Banks makes digital feel as human as it is in its stores, he said they really haven't figured that out yet. I asked a TD digital leader the same thing years ago and heard, we don't know yet, so I want to see how far along they've come. I recorded this at the 2025 Financial Brand Forum when Todd was in charge of digital transformation strategy at TD Bank. He explains why a bank with the industry recognition for its mobile and online experience still reads a list of customer urgence every morning 8.30, why the basis come before the next shiny object, and how a two-day design sprint replaced work that typically took 16 weeks. If your bank or credit union is racing to cut account opening to a few fields, here is his case for letting customers choose their own path. Here's my conversation with Todd Purcell.

When you have a title like that, you've got to get, in the old days of business cards, they wouldn't have allowed that to happen, but those are long gone. As I mentioned, TD Bank is a legacy organization with new technology and truly an innovative spirit.

You joined TD Bank relatively recently in its history. Can you talk a little bit about your background that got you to TD Bank, and then a little bit about what you do at TD Bank now?

Todd Purcell (1:35)

Sure. Thanks, Jim. Thanks for the opportunity. I joined TD back in December of 23 Prior to TD, my entire career has been really in digital transformation. I was lucky, I think, to start almost on the ground floor in 1995, when I was at Chemical Bank, if you can recall, that then became Chase.

In that experience, I was in a rotational program, young in my career. Then I had this moment where there was a lot of startups, big banks thinking about a pure digital play, Wingspan Bank, if you can remember back then.

Jim Marous (2:12)

New reference we found when we talked to Raro.

Todd Purcell (2:15)

Yes. There was a moment where I was really early, again, earlier in my career and someone came over and said, listen, we're thinking about building a digital experience for Chase. It's called Spectrum. It was a dial-up service. Can you take a look at it and think about how we go to an online experience? I was really just the right time, right place, young enough to be excited, and also young enough not to know what I wasn't doing. Then I had an opportunity to think about that and really build from the ground floor what became ICOB or Internet Chase Online Banking at a very early stage of my career. That then started really what I've been focused on for my entire journey, working at large brands, Chase, American Express, MetLife, the Hartford, USAA, Webster, more of a community bank. But all around sitting at the center of those organizations, working across this consumer and small business segments, and determining how to drive digital transformation to scale. As head of digital marketing, head of digital servicing, digital strategy, but all really that same concept of how do you really interact with customers in a more meaningful way through the digital channel. So I've been super lucky to do that through my entire career. Really what brought me to TD was a desire to get back. I was consulting for a couple of years, but I knew I wanted to get back to banking.

What attracted me about TD was a phenomenal brand.

They were at a point of inflection with a legacy store experience but they wanted to transform digitally, and they've been doing good work, but they wanted to bring in some new energetic thinking to the organization to say, how do we drive the transformation faster? It really was an opportunity I could not pass up to come in and have an opportunity to think about doing this for a top 10 bank at scale, is why I joined back in December, and it's been 15 months of an amazing experience so far.

Jim Marous (4:09)

So you talk about that digital transformation experience, and I would agree that when you look at TD Bank, they were brand forward, they were doing well in digital, but that's not good enough right now. The speed, you were with some amazing organizations that the focus was on, how do we double down because this train is moving faster than we are? I've talked about it many times that you have to go faster than you think you have to go, because the train is going faster every day. Innovation, transformation, change has never happened this slow, or this fast will never happen this slowly again. So you got to keep on ramping up. We're lucky in that we have 150 organizations downstairs that are willing to help you make that transformation quicker than either one of us would have ever thought five years ago could have happened. I mean, you can do core transformation now in 12 to 18 months. You weren't able to do it in 10 years before, and you'd be keep on changing it because you'd have it happen. We have seen in somewhat recent past organizations that say we're going to come in with a brand new mobile banking experience. They pre-announce it 18 months ahead of when they're going to actually introduce it for whatever reason, and he sits there and go, is this going to be outdated before it gets introduced because things are now happening so fast?