The coronavirus pandemic has forced many bankers and bank processes to pivot in unexpected ways. For TD, it has meant turning its cybersecurity centers into technology “war rooms” to handle the rapidly changing needs of customers facing a new reality.  

These war rooms “are agile pods that enable us to virtually solve pressing problems,” said Greg Keeley, executive vice president of enterprise technology at TD. “How do we support customers, who are used to engaging one way, in a totally different way while doing completely remote work?” 

According to Keeley, TD launched what it called the “fusion center” at the end of 2019 to monitor and react to cybersecurity threats. A few months later, when COVID-19 began to alter everyday life and pummel the economy, the bank repurposed the physical cybersecurity command centers and their personnel to focus on its pandemic response. With the pandemic continually changing how customers interact with their banks, the war rooms allow TD to rapidly stand up solutions to satisfy consumers and regulators alike. 

Keeley described them as command centers with multiple screens and side rooms for teams to work, and said they’ve migrated to secure Webex channels on the bank’s internal network, moving away from the physical fusion centers in Toronto, New Jersey and Singapore.  

The war rooms are now virtual and staffed 24/7, bringing together bank experts across cybersecurity, tech, legal, fraud and ops fields to foster agile processes. Although the main command center has about 20 people assigned to it, employees on the sub-teams working on various problems under that command center number close to 1,000, according to Keeley’s quick estimate.  

The TD war rooms are designed to address pain points for both businesses and consumers. For example, they helped the bank stand up a solution for the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program loans. Because the bank had employees from so many different sectors working together on a solution, it was able to start accepting PPP loan applications April 6, just three days after the SBA kicked off the program.   

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In general, the bank is seeing an uptick in customers migrating to digital channels. According to Keeley, its digital engagement was up 13% year-over-year in March. “It’s early days, but we are seeing customers finding the channels they are the most comfortable with,” he said. 

To handle the increased engagement, TD has launched text-based messaging through its online channels for customers to interact with bank employees. This human-digital approach allows the bank’s service agents to help customers navigate handling their finances online. 

Toronto-based TD has CA$1.5 trillion ($1.1 trillion) in total assets. The bank has more than 9 million customers in the U.S., and 1,200 locations on the East Coast.  

According to Keeley, the bank has more than 55,000 employees working from home, including more than half its call center employees. 

“As we have rapidly ramped up the virtual work, there are training and learning curves,” Keeley said. “But I’ve been impressed with how quickly people are picking this up.”