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Carter Johnson
- In November, TD Bank opened a flagship branch at One Vanderbilt, New York City's fourth-tallest tower.
- The location is built on an open-concept plan designed for flexible interactions with customers.
- The design signals TD's future branch plans as it trims its physical footprint during the pandemic.
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Just blocks away from some of New York City's most iconic landmarks in Midtown Manhattan sits the city's fourth-tallest tower, One Vanderbilt. The 93-story tall skyscraper, which opened in 2020, is home to one anchor tenant in particular: TD Bank.
This November, TD Bank opened a flagship branch on the ground floor of One Vanderbilt, at the corner of 42nd Street and Madison Avenue. The design was inspired in part by changing consumer behaviors due to the pandemic, and aspects of it are expected to be replicated at the bank's other branches.
Headquartered in Canada, TD's US subsidiary operates more than 1,100 branches across the country, and is the eighth largest bank by deposits here, per FDIC data. According to its latest quarterly report, TD's US retail banking operation accounted for nearly a third of TD's overall net income.
According to TD Bank's Head of US Consumer Distribution & Wealth, Ernie Diaz, the planning for the new flagship space at One Vanderbilt began before the COVID-19 pandemic upended how retail banking customers approach their visit to branches.
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But the layout for the new location also reflects how TD Bank and other national banking franchises now approach in-person business post-pandemic. The design eschews traditional branch hallmarks like lines for teller windows and separate spaces for different banking functions, replacing them with employees with "untethered" tablets.
"The days where you would come in, you'd take an appointment and now you're waiting in the queue — that works sometimes, but it's not realistic," Diaz told Insider this December after One Vanderbilt opened.
This summer, Insider profiled 10 of the top execs at the nation's largest banks in charge of branch strategy, Diaz among them. At the time, Diaz said that TD Bank had begun to see "permanence" in the ways in which customer behavior had changed during the pandemic. Other banks, including JPMorgan Chase, have also begun redesigning branches and replaced teller windows with employees who can interact with customers with iPads throughout the space.
"What we're seeing now, almost two years into this thing, is that the customers want the optionality," Diaz said.
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Like other banks, TD Bank has also reducedits net branch count in the US as customers increasingly opt for digital products. In February of 2021, the bank announced it would shutter 82 branches across its US network as it reinvests in digital banking and higher-traffic locations. The closures included 21 locations in the New York City metro area, the Business Journals reported at the time.
But Diaz said the new design concepts put in place at One Vanderbilt are going to spread throughout the bank's remaining branch network. He pointed to one recently opened location in Orlando, Florida.
"It's a smaller footprint, but it has some of the same principles," Diaz said.
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TD Bank designed its flagship branch at One Vanderbilt Avenue in New York City with an agile, open floor plan.
The layout of the branch at One Vanderbilt is designed to be flexible depending upon the flow of traffic in the space and demand for different products.
"You have the ability to have flexible furniture that is conducive, depending on if you have a lot of folks that have come in for transactions and you need to expand who's handling transactions and deposits, for example, or you can cut that space to sit down with someone and have that private conversation around a financial issue," Diaz said.
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Rather than relying on employees meeting customers at fixed locations throughout the branch, TD bankers now carry tablets.
Across TD Bank's network of locations, branches have "moved down the path of untethered devices," Diaz said.
"The days where you would come in, you'd take an appointment, and now you're waiting in the queue. That works sometimes, but it's not realistic," he added.
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Some mainstays of bank branches, like ATMs, will stick around at TD Bank's new location.
Consumer banking preferences have changed throughout the pandemic as customers increasingly opt to bank digitally. But TD Bank still sees a benefit in having a network of physical stores. According to Diaz, it's important for them to have choices when it comes to banking services, which now include options like the instant issuing and curbside pickup of debit cards.
"If they want to call in, if they want use digital, if they want pick it up on the store side and have a continuation, or they have additional needs, you must be able to provide that optionality to be relevant to your customer," he continued.
The One Vanderbilt location offers ample branding opportunities for TD.
When TD Bank's branch at One Vanderbilt opened this November, the company said the ground floor was also home to 2,700 square feet of immersive digital screens. They're a persistent reminder of TD's brand.
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TD now occupies a corner location in Midtown Manhattan, even as the bank adopts smaller footprints throughout much of its branch network.
The location of TD's flagship branch at One Vanderbilt, at the corner of 42nd Street and Madison, is just across the street from a major commuter hub for the New York region: Grand Central Station.
Many of TD Bank's new branch concepts revolve around smaller footprints as customers increasingly embrace digital banking tools, lessening the need for store visits. But, Diaz said, "There are always corners that you're going to take because it just makes sense, because they're high traffic areas."
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A view from One Vanderbilt facing downtown, with the Empire State Building 10 blocks south.
In 2014, well before work had even begun on the new skyscraper, TD Bank and One Vanderbilt's developer, SL Green Realty Corp., announced the signing of a long-term lease that said the bank will occupy take 200,000 square feet of space at the tower.
That deal was followed in 2018 with the announcement that TD Securities would also take control of some 120,000 square feet at One Vanderbilt across the tower's 10th, 11th, and 12th floors, leaving TD with a significant footprint in Midtown, Real Estate Weekly reported.
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TD Bank now counts 135 branches across New York City after launching there in 2001.
TD Bank has significantly expanded throughout New York City since opening its first location in the city 20 years ago.
The bank now counts roughly 2,500 employees in New York, and a customer base in the city of approximately 1.1 million. After closing 21 branches in the New York City metro area in the spring of 2021, TD Bank now has 135 branches across the city.
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