At TD, the future of banking is personalized and digital
Gone are the days when paying a bill or depositing a cheque meant you had to go to the bank.
Many Canadians are now confident carrying out day-to-day banking on their phones and laptops and are ready to take the next step, towards experiences that go beyond the transactional and are tailored to their financial needs.
For TD Chief Digital and Payments Officer, Rizwan Khalfan, this is an opportunity to deepen relationships with customers by using data and artificial intelligence-driven tools to help deliver the curated, personalized solutions they’re seeking from their bank.
TD has seen first-hand how customers embraced and adopted digital financial tools over the last two years, explains Mr. Khalfan. Nearly two-thirds of the bank’s Canadian customers are now considered by TD to be digitally active, and TD has added 1.5 million North American digitally active users since the start of the pandemic.
“Digital adoption and engagement are at unprecedented numbers,” he says. “We’re seeing our customers having a higher affinity for digital engagement, and the pandemic has accelerated this trend with customers looking for ways to bank safely and conveniently from home. At TD we’re engaging with our customers digitally more than ever before.”
The TD MySpend app, for example – which helps customers track and manage their spending habits and gives them control of their accounts, investments and bill payments – recently surpassed three million registered users, with usage increasing more than 30 per cent during the pandemic. Through its focus on innovation, TD has continued to enhance the app’s capabilities and features over the last two years, based on customer feedback.
Mr. Khalfan is focused on delivering TD customers highly personalized experiences based on predictive insights from past customer behaviour and transaction patterns.
“With our customers digitally engaging with us more than ever, we have the opportunity to deliver banking experiences that are relevant, contextual and that build on the trust they have placed in us,” Mr. Khalfan says.
TD has a robust and well-established innovation ecosystem, which includes ideation, incubation, acceleration, a leading patent portfolio, start up and big tech relationships, investments in fintech and venture capital, and a presence in the academic arena. This ecosystem helps the bank to move quickly when deploying new functions designed to provide more personalized solutions for their customers.
Going beyond transactions
During the pandemic, says Mr. Khalfan, TD worked to deploy around a dozen functions that combine data with an analytics or AI model to deliver unique, differentiated experiences to their customers.
“We want to understand our customers’ needs and preferences,” says Mr. Khalfan. “Data allows us to develop deeper relationships with our customers and have a kind of ongoing digital conversation with them so we can work to better understand their preferences and bring them experiences designed to help meet their needs.”
An example of one of these innovations: TD launched an analytics capability to notify customers of upcoming bill payments via push notifications, meaning they could pay a bill on time with just a tap, allowing customers to see options and make personal choices. One customer might prefer to quickly pay their bill in full, Mr. Khalfan suggests, while another might want to know if the amount matches previous bills.
“All of us need to pay our bills, but we have different preferences in how we go about doing it,” he says. “Digital insights are an effective way to support our customers with information that is relevant in a digital setting.”
Using human-factored design methodology, where designers put themselves in the customers’ shoes to create relevant experiences, TD worked with its AI division, Layer 6, to produce an algorithm during the pandemic that could accurately predict an account balance two weeks in advance.
Going further than just alerting the customer about an insufficient balance or an influx of cash, TD looked to create an experience that shared clear, action-oriented information so the customer could make strategic financial decisions for them – for example, suggesting they transfer money from their savings account in the case of a low balance, or put money aside for long-term goals if their chequing account balance was higher than usual.
“We took the human-factor design competency that we have and combined it with AI, to create an experience to help customers navigate different financial situations,” explains Mr. Khalfan.
These insights are also accessible to TD colleagues when they’re having a conversation with a customer, allowing for a seamless transition between the digital experience and a phone, virtual or branch-based appointment.
And these innovations are being applied across the Bank. TD has seen a surge in new direct investing clients and recognized an opportunity to design a personalized experience that engages TD Direct Investing clients with digital insights through the TD app once their account has been opened. This includes information on how to set up an investment watchlist, how to look up an investment quote and steps to making their first investment. These personalized insight prompts also direct clients to educational resources available through the TD Direct Investing Learning Centre to help clients build their investment knowledge and confidence.
Building on the momentum created by significant digital adoption over the last two years, adapting to launch products and tools that offer personalized digital solutions will continue to be a priority for the Bank as TD digital & AI teams continue to work together to create new types of data-powered experiences.
“We want to empower our customers who are using digital properties with insights that are actionable and tailored to their needs,” says Mr. Khalfan. “Data-driven insights are helping to make this happen.”
IF YOU DON'T GO DIGITAL YOU LOOSE ACCESS TO YOUR ONLINE ACCOUNTS!
March 22nd, 2023.
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