TD Bank’s Disruptive Digital Dogma: Culture and CX Trump Speed and Features
By Justin Estes, Contributor at The Financial Brand
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Executive Summary
- In a recent episode of the Banking Transformed podcast with Jim Marous, recorded live at The Financial Brand Forum 2025, TD Bank’s Head of Digital Strategy Todd Purcell explains why making the basics brilliant is step one in any real transformation.
- TD Bank’s digital overhaul puts experience ahead of speed, protecting its “Unexpectedly Human” brand as it transforms.
- Purcell rejects the omnichannel buzzword in favor of a connected customer experience built on choice, consistency and continuity.
From Legacy Bank to Digital Leader
Q: What drew you to TD Bank and what was your priority upon joining?
Todd Purcell: I joined TD in December 2023. Before TD, my entire career has been focused on digital transformation and I was fortunate to start almost from the ground up in 1995, when I was at Chemical Bank, which later became Chase.
And in that experience, I was in a rotational program at a young stage in my career. I had a moment where there were many startups and big banks thinking about a pure digital play, such as Wingspan Bank, if you can remember back then. There was a moment, earlier in my career, when 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, “And can you take a look at it and think about how we go to an online experience?”
And that then started really what I’ve been focused on for the rest of 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.
What attracted me to TD was its phenomenal brand and 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 that transformation faster?”
Q: How did you approach understanding TD’s culture and existing digital capabilities?
Purcell: I was careful in coming in with that blueprint to say, “I know what to do. Let’s go forward.” I spent the first three months on a listening tour, speaking with over a hundred other executives across the organization to ground myself in TD and its culture and ensure I understood what would be effective in driving that transformation.
And so, what was the most significant need at TD? While we were doing good things digitally and making progress, we had a solid experience, but there was a focus on features versus the first experience. And there was a feature war, but what about the experience?
There was also a sense of a lack of understanding that this is a 24/7, 365-day e-commerce engine that’s running. We viewed it as a channel, in addition to our stores and contact center, but not a real engine driving conversations with our customers every single moment.
Bridging Human Heritage with Digital Innovation
Q: How do you maintain TD’s “Unexpectedly Human” brand promise in digital channels?
Purcell: Coming in and being in the industry and solely focused on digital as the primary channel and driving transformation. So, joining TD, we’re called America’s most convenient bank, I knew there was a store legacy and so I had to reorient my thinking a little bit to say, “Well, how do I think about digital plus that human interaction?” Because it is so important, I would have failed if I had just come in digitally.
I knew we had to think about the digital, the contact center and the stores together and deliver that unexpectedly human experience that we talk about as our brand and America’s most convenient bank. Since we still have pens and lollipops, we now have dog biscuits coming out of ATMs, so we think about that human interaction for our customers.
However, my answer to your question is that we haven’t figured it out yet, but it’s part of our journey. And we think about, again, what is unexpectedly human mean digitally, what is the equivalent of a lollipop digitally?
Q: What does it mean to offer customer choice between digital efficiency and human interaction?
Purcell: There’s a push in our industry to allow customers to open an account on their mobile phone in three minutes or less, with just three fields. And I’m saying, “Well, let’s flip that on its head a little bit.” Some customers may prefer a sure way to interact, while others may wish for a more human experience.
How does that work when you come in to open an account? It could be 10 minutes, or it could be a guided journey; perhaps a human is being present in that interaction. So, do not be overly digitally focused on speed, but think about what specific segments of customers want to interact with.
A guided journey, let the customer choose their path, rather than being singularly obsessed with speed, fields and mobile. And that’s the ultimate answer to delivering a more human experience digitally.
Dig deeper:
- How TD Bank Creates Unexpectedly Human Experiences
- Inside Varo’s Mission to Bank the Financially Vulnerable
- How KeyBank Competes in the Age of Giants and Disruptors
Making the Basics Brilliant First
Q: Why focus on perfecting everyday banking before pursuing advanced innovations?
Purcell: Going back to my comment before about the strategy, so we have that three-year strategy, first way point is make the basics brilliant, second way point is go beyond transactional, third way point is to be the financial companion that first waypoint make the basics brilliant is a change in how we approach things.
Again, consider features, but also think about the overall experience and take into account the ongoing investment required to optimize it. I’ve seen other organizations and I believe TD has been historically at fault on some occasions. To invest in something, launch it and then move on to the next opportunity. I’ve tried to change our focus to say that when we’ve our core experiences, we need ongoing investment to optimize those experiences.
You earn the right to do more if you get what customers expect.
Q: What specific improvements have you made to core banking experiences?
Purcell: We’re looking at everyday banking and we do it very much in acumen-centered language. So, I want to check my balance, send money to a friend and pay a bill to my landscaper. So, we think about everyday banking experiences and stare each one down, assessing what we call the digital readiness of each one to determine if that experience is ready for 100% self-service.
And/or if that experience wants it and the customer wants it, can the choice, consistency, or continuity for another channel be ready for a cross-channel experience? So, we ask ourselves, is it ready for digital? And is it prepared for CCX?
We launched digital disputes, which is a significant enhancement for us. We’ve modernized the entire experience for mobile, so it’s a whole brand-new, on-brand, more relevant and contemporary experience. That’s an accomplishment. We’re now enhancing the account setup experience to make it more intuitive for people who come in after applying to onboard.
Connected Customer Experience Over Omnichannel
Q: What distinguishes “Connected Customer Experience” from traditional omnichannel approaches?
Purcell: I’m moving away from it because, as an industry, how many times have we said omni, multi, opti? That’s been around for as long as we’ve probably been in this space. And so, I’ve been purposeful in changing the language and I call it a connected customer experience.
And that has toned down a little bit of this. We’re going to displace contact center personnel, we’re reducing store volume and we’re optimizing the channel. We are delivering a CCX experience that provides choice, consistency and continuity, regardless of how they interact. And that has helped a little bit internally to change the dialogue and just reduce that threat of being no longer relevant in how you interact with customers.
Q: How do you ensure consistency across digital, contact center and branch interactions?
Purcell: I think it is using that beacon CCX language, I think starts to get that in terms of that choice, consistent continuity, I guess being aligned to a single NorthStar vision, partnering with our market organization, which is the brand team, which is going to be delivering those messages out to the marketplace.
Our customers interact with us 20 times on average per month, so we deliver the brand experience 20 times a month to our customers, far in excess of what we see in the marketplace in terms of brand advertising. We’re trying to think about that. How do we start delivering that message internally when our customers interact with us?
The Future of Banking Relationships
Q: What does it mean for TD to become a “financial companion” rather than just a bank?
Purcell: As I think again, going back to the three-year strategy, our way 0.3 is to be the financial companion. And not in the sense that we have to own the entire relationship with the customer, but we can be that trusted money setter bank where the customer can use us as their hub and then build their financial ecosystem around us.
I envision a space where we could be that core, trusted bank, trusted interaction with you, a partner with you, but then let you build your ecosystem around us, regardless of where you want to bank. We’re not going to control everything in your wallet, but let us be that center and create an ecosystem where you can bank with us and have an experience that’s trusted with TD and with your other partners.
Q: How will open banking and data integration support this vision?
Purcell: I think CFPB 1033, the compliance requirement for open banking, was a push for probably many of you and a push for us. But we’re now saying, “Okay, that’s a regulatory opportunity that we have to meet for a bank of our size.” But now, how do we think about it in a way that’s enabling? How can open banking be an enabler?
How can open banking enable us to obtain all that transaction information, cleanse it and understand it, regardless of where it’s coming from? I think that’s our GPS. By having all that information, washing it, enriching it and then using it for insight based on whatever path they’re taking, I think that’s how I see the answer.
