Just a few weeks after two major Canadian banks planted rudimentary sites on the Internet, the Toronto Dominion Bank has created a home page that dwarfs them both.
Last month, when the Royal Bank and the Bank of Montreal announced Internet sites that contain mostly corporate information, the TD Bank said it would wait until it had ‘something worth putting on the Internet.’
Developed by td and Toronto-based Quadravision, the Financial Information Resource, as the nearly 300-page site is called, contains a broad range of information, including an RRSP Centre.
Steve Gesner, associate vice-president of cash management services at td, says the centre, available just in time for this tax year, supplies generic answers to most frequently asked questions such as who qualifies for rrsps, and with what limits.
‘Then, because you eventually want to drive transactions, as you get deeper and deeper you get transferred to the main td site, where you can look at specific products to meet your requirements,’ Gesner says.
Another interesting facet to the site is its ability to download software and accept and send e-mail.
The site allows visitors to download a free copy of td’s Small Business Planner software, or feed information into its Wealth Allocation Model.
After answering certain questions, the program tells you ‘these are the investments you should make to realize those investment objectives,’ Gesner says.
td will also be installing another software package called Mortgage Navigator in the near future, which helps people make house buying decisions based on their savings and income, and some other personal financial software.
The services available through the site, although clearly associated with the td, are intended to provide basic, and neutral information.
‘These are generic tools that hopefully will assist people who visit the site in trying to determine what they should do with their money, what they should invest in,’ Gesner says.
To encourage people to visit the site, td is considering it a branch unto itself for the purposes of an rrsp promotional contest, which will award double the interest on an rrsp for a winner from each branch.
A winner will also be chosen from those who visit the site.
‘People who initiate an inquiry into the contest from the website will be in a much smaller population to win,’ Gesner says.
The TD Bank will now include its web address and e-mail address in all of its printed material, and will maybe send promotional flyers with mailed bank statements.
The site can be found at www.tdbank.ca/tdbank.
