TD explores the future of immersive VR experiences

In collaboration with Flybits, Capco and Mesmerise, TD creates engaging, personalized pilots and proofs of concept targeting commercial, consumer and early talent audiences

TORONTO , March 23, 2023 /CNW/ – TD Bank Group (“TD”) announced that the Bank has launched several immersive experiences that use emerging technologies to deliver the next level of interactive engagement aimed at customers and new colleagues. Together, these research-driven virtual experiences help facilitate a new and inclusive way of engaging with the Bank – offering new possibilities for customers and colleagues to interact with TD.

“We’re on the precipice of a new engagement frontier with Web 3.0, and virtual reality platforms are just scratching the surface of how TD can connect with its customers,” said Rizwan Khalfan, Chief Digital and Payments Officer, TD Bank Group. “TD is constantly exploring emerging technologies to identify new platforms that can help us connect with our customers, colleagues and communities. Immersive VR offers opportunities to develop rich environments with inclusivity in mind and connects us in a more intuitive way with our customers.”

Engage early talent through collaborative immersive experiences
In collaboration with Capco, the global management and technology company and Mesmerise, an enterprise VR company, TD launched a Virtual Reality Co-op and Intern Pilot Program. The pilot aims to create a more immersive and collaborative experience for new TD colleagues.

More than 100 interns, mainly from the Platforms and Technology and Digital and Innovation teams, were given the opportunity to sign up for the programme, which runs from January to April 2023. Students received virtual reality headsets, created their own personal avatars and participated in a variety of 3D immersive programming, including:

Networking Sessions: Designed to help build a peer-to-peer network of interns, co-op students and TD colleagues from across the Bank. Participants have the opportunity to participate in a variety of virtual networking events, including a scavenger hunt, and team building activities such as dodgeball, bowling, an escape room and more. Live Leadership Panel Discussions: Participants have the opportunity to attend panel discussions with leaders from across the organization for career advice and to learn more about their career journeys, as well as different areas of the Bank. Innovation Challenge: Participants are placed in groups and ‘ given a real problem facing TD. They have 60 days to work with their mentor and group to create an innovative solution. VR Pilot participants have access to collaboration and design tools that will enable them to collaborate, whiteboard and build prototypes. Lunch and learn about the ‘future of money’: Attendees can attend this popular TD lunch and learn to present as well as network. with TD managers and each other.

“Our goal with TD was to drive engagement through a dynamic early talent immersive experience that would help new TD colleagues connect in a meaningful and natural way no matter where they are,” said Gary Teelucksingh, CEO of Capco Canada.

Research by Brandon Hall Group (2015) found that paying attention to employee onboarding can improve employee retention by up to 82%, while a Gallup study (2018) found that 88% of organizations are not onboarding well. Virtual onboarding provides an opportunity to look at traditional onboarding through a different lens – especially for early talent.

“In a hybrid world, connectivity is key. VR offers an inclusive and immersive option for collaboration, one that you just can’t get through video conferencing. We’re proud to have worked with TD to bring that level of connectivity to bringing their team. ,” said Andrew Hawken, CEO and co-founder of Mesmerise.

“We are excited to offer this engaging experience that allows our interns and co-op students to connect with each other, develop a sense of community and embrace our TD culture,” said Irene Santos, Vice President, Global Talent Acquisition by TD.

Gamified Financial Literacy
Together with context-aware computing company, Flybits, TD created a proof-of-concept spelled out financial literacy VR experience, where users make financial decisions and learn about how those decisions affect their finances. Aimed at the under 25 demographic, participants are immersed in an interactive 3D experience, built on Flybits Open Dome platform, where they are asked to make financial decisions about spending, credit, saving and investing, and are asked how these decisions make them feel. Users can interact with tools that help them visualize how their decisions affect their financial well-being. By playing the experience, users collect objects and badges for good financial decisions, and at the end receive a financial persona that matches the decisions they made. To ensure that the experience is always evolving, TD asks users for feedback within the experience so that the experience reflects their needs.

“We wanted to evaluate and understand how virtual reality and gamification provide an enhanced personalized learning experience for a younger audience, which led to the creation of an audience-specific experience with a customer-centric lens,” said Hossein Rahnama, founder and CEO head of Flybits, said. “Both Flybits and TD are leaders in building incredible user experiences – together we can continue to test and build new ways that can bring audiences closer and build deeper connections.”

Interactive US commercial banking experience
To experiment with new models of customer engagement and collect feedback from US commercial customers and explore an option for advice in an immersive environment, TD built an interactive virtual commercial banking experience with Flybits to enhance user convenience with 3D navigation and testing VR technology. The proof-of-concept, unveiled at a conference in Philadelphia in October 2022, featured intuitive dashboards that could illustrate information such as cash position, line of credit and relevant banking products to potential customers. It also featured a live video call capability where potential commercial clients could connect directly with a TD relationship manager in real time and walk through their portfolio and ask questions.

“Customer preferences are changing, and many people are becoming more and more comfortable in VR experiences,” said Jo Jagadish, EVP, Head of Corporate Products, Services and Innovation, TD Bank. “The commercial banking proof-of-concept allowed us to see how we could develop such a service for commercial banking customers by providing a personalized experience and tailored information from the channel in which our customers prefer to engage with us become.”

This focus on immersive VR helps TD build on its longstanding commitment to personalized experiences for its customers, colleagues and communities. TD has a robust and well-established innovation ecosystem, which includes ideation, incubation, acceleration, fintech, startup and big tech relationships, fintech and venture capital investments and a presence in the academic arena.

“We are always looking to improve our digital capabilities and to design experiences that exceed the expectations of the customers we serve and the colleagues we hire,” said Imran Khan, head of innovation at TD Bank Group. “Through our innovation ecosystem, we designed prototype test cases to research, evaluate and learn, and to create authentic and hyper-personalized experiences that can transform the way our new and existing customers engage with us.”

Today’s announcement is part of TD Tech Day, an annual event that showcases the Bank’s unique innovation, technology and modernization story. This year’s theme is inclusive innovation and highlights how TD delivers technology and innovation to help drive inclusion for the benefit of our colleagues, customers and communities.

About TD Bank Group
The Toronto-Dominion Bank and its subsidiaries are collectively known as TD Bank Group (“TD” or the “Bank”). TD is the fifth largest bank in North America by assets and serves more than 27 million customers in four key businesses operating in a number of locations in financial centers around the world: Canadian Personal and Commercial Banking, including TD Canada Trust and TD Auto Finance Canada; US Retail, including TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank®, TD Auto Finance US, TD Wealth (US), and an investment in The Charles Schwab Corporation; Wealth management and insurance, including TD Wealth (Canada), TD Direct Investment and TD Insurance; and Wholesale Banking, including TD Securities. TD is also one of the world’s leading online financial services companies, with more than 15 million active online and mobile customers. TD had $1.9 trillion in assets as of January 31, 2023. The Toronto-Dominion Bank trades under the symbol “TD” on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges.

About Capco
Capco, a Wipro company, is a global technology and management consultancy specializing in driving digital transformation in the financial services industry. With a growing client portfolio comprising more than 100 global organizations, Capco works at the intersection of business and technology by combining innovative thinking with unrivaled industry knowledge to deliver digital initiatives for banking and payments, capital markets, wealth and asset management, insurance, and the energy sector. Capco’s cutting-edge ingenuity is brought to life by its award-winning Be Yourself At Work culture and diverse talent. To learn more, visit capco.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

About Mesmerise
Mesmerise, the trusted guide to the Metaverse, helps leading enterprises, including Morningstar, Wells Fargo and Allianz, host immersive meetings, conferences, training sessions and events in virtual reality. Through Mesmerise’s proprietary Gatherings platform, global companies can bring their teams together to host personalized virtual experiences for any event using a dedicated digital headquarters.

Originally launched in the UK, Mesmerise was founded in 2016 by Andrew Hawken and Daglar Cizmeci. Today, the company’s immersive VR experiences around the world span nearly 200 employees worldwide. The company is based in London with US headquarters in Santa Monica, California. To learn more about Mesmerise, visit mesmerisevr.com.

About Flybits
Flybits helps financial institutions scale digital value by mobilizing data as a strategic asset and creating enterprise-grade customer experiences that drive loyalty and business results. The company, an experience design platform for data-led banking, was founded in 2013 with the belief that data is the digital economy’s most valuable asset and can improve people’s lives in powerful ways: helping them connect with loved ones, better making decisions and filtering out unwanted noise. Guided by this, Flybits helps complex enterprises bring the power of data to life – turning customer data into unique personalized experiences by introducing predictive and contextual digital recommendations at scale.

TD Bank Group
For more information:
Mina Bines, [email protected]

Capco
For more information:
[email protected]

Bewitched
For more information:
[email protected]

Flybits
For more information:
Ali Rahnema, [email protected]

SOURCE TD Bank Group