TD Bank has launched TD Innovation Partners (TDIP), a full-service banking platform for technology entrepreneurs.
TD’s new offering looks to provide private banking and financing services tailored to tech founders, as well as access to TD Wealth’s private banking and wealth-management solutions. The new offering is a competitor to RBCx, RBC’s innovation banking group, which launched in 2021, and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which shook the tech ecosystem when it was shut down by regulators last year.
“With more than a million business banking customers across Canada, TD plays an active role in supporting business owners and helping them achieve their financial goals,” TD’s group head of Canadian business banking, Barbara Hooper, said in a statement. “Our TDIP team stands ready to support the next generation of innovation companies at every step of their journeys.”
In fact, all but one of TDIP’s leaders come with leadership experience from SVB or RBCx. Led by Shez Samji, a former managing director and head of business development at SVB, the team also includes former SVB credit solutions director Mark Kiyonaga and former SVB vice-presidents Michelle Sabourin and Tom Lowden. Meanwhile, TDIP associate directors Thomas Bird and Alida Kanani were vice presidents at RBCx prior to joining TD in recent months.
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“At TDIP, we’re focused on enhancing and curating the banking experience for technology companies and their founders so they can spend more time creating and growing their business,” Samji said in a statement.
TD Bank has been under scrutiny recently, with the Toronto Star reporting in May that the bank was under at least two money laundering investigations by the United States’ Department of Justice. The Star reported that one investigation alleged TD was the primary institution used by Chinese drug traffickers to launder $653 million USD in fentanyl sales.
Earlier this month, BNN Bloomberg reported that a TD branch worker in Florida took multiple $200-USD bribes to help launder millions of dollars to Colombia. The bank is also facing a class-action lawsuit alleging TD misrepresented the systemic deficiencies in its anti-money-laundering controls.
Feature image courtesy TD.
