Sheryl L. McQuade was recently named TD Bank’s regional vice president for the New England metro area. She has more than 30 years of experience working in banking in Massachusetts and Connecticut, including three years with TD Bank. She has a bachelor’s degree in finance from Lehigh University and a master’s in business administration from Western New England University.
PBN: What are your top three goals for the year ahead in your new role?
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MCQUADE: The top three goals include: 1. Growth across our commercial and retail banking businesses. We celebrate growth in terms of increasing our market share with new client acquisition and deepening the portfolios of our existing customers, while also acting as trusted advisers to customers and prospects across our omni channel distribution network; 2. Expanding our community partnerships in Rhode Island through our investments of volunteerism and donations and fulfilling our brand promise to enrich the lives of our customers, colleagues and community members; and 3. Acquiring and retaining diverse, top talent across New England. Our ability to attract and retain entry-level talent is especially challenging, and our success here is highly reliant upon having the best talent.
PBN: What do you see as the greatest challenges to growing TD Bank’s small business and commercial banking in New England?
MCQUADE: TD has a very strong market share in each of our New England states, which is a very positive problem to have but presents challenges to growth, as many of our peer banks want to be where we are.
Businesses across the region face challenges with our aging workforce, stagnant population growth and the older demographic in New England. We need to work closely with businesses in this area to address these challenges and increase confidence in doing business in our area. However, we remain bullish, as there are more than 74,400 businesses of all sizes in the Providence metropolitan statistical area, according to Dun & Bradstreet.
PBN: Local banks often tout themselves as better at creating the personal relationships that business customers want and need. How would you respond to that? What can TD Bank offer that others cannot?
MCQUADE: One TD! Our model has decentralized, local regional representation of all areas of the bank. As regional president, I not only oversee the teams and operations at our nine Rhode Island stores but across our commercial banking businesses. We collaborate across business lines and in our community and put the customer in the center of everything we do. Our One TD model ensures accountability, accessibility, local decision-making. Essentially, our regions operate like independent community banks with the products, financial strength and capital of a large, national bank.
PBN: How have rising interest rates impacted consumer and business banking (demand, types of loans, etc.)? Do you expect that to continue in the year ahead?
MCQUADE: We are seeing fewer refinances of business and consumer loans and fewer consumer mortgage originations over the past few months, in line with the banking industry. Businesses continue to seek out and use lines of credit, and products like Small Business Administration loans remain strong. Because TD Bank is well-capitalized and has very strong credit ratings, we remain poised to continue underwriting credit throughout 2023.
PBN: How important are brick-and-mortar branches to TD Bank’s growth strategy? Has that changed in recent years?
MCQUADE: Stores remain a key part of our engagement model, and that’s very much in line with what we’re seeing in terms of demand from our customers. What’s evolving is the types of interactions and conversations that take place in our stores, transitioning from simple transactions like making a check deposit to more advice-driven conversations about financial goals.
While we are absolutely focused on enhancing our digital capabilities, we also want our customers to feel comfortable and confident knowing they have the ability to choose when and how they want to interact with us.
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. You may reach her at Lavin@PBN.com.
