TD Bank has named Mid-South Metro Regional President Chris Ward as its inaugural head of U.S. small-business banking, the lender announced Wednesday.
Ward, who joined the bank in 2024 following seven years at Bank of America, will lead TD’s small-business banking segment nationally.
This includes its Small Business Administration loan program, which ranks as one of the most active nationwide.
“I've been fortunate enough in my career to lead small business at a domestic level at two different banks, at a global level as well previously, and then most recently, at Bank America, leading small-business credit,” Ward said in an interview with Banking Dive. “I've always been involved in small business. Even when I was a young branch manager many, many [years] ago, I called and focused on small business first and foremost.”
Growing up, Ward’s relationship with small business was even more intimate, “pounding nails in Palm Beach County” for his dad’s small residential construction business.
Small-business owners “want to know somebody and need somebody for advice,” Ward said. “Whether that's a branch manager or small-business banker or a small-business relationship manager, having someone to help them through the nuances, the red tape, the bureaucracy that all small businesses have to deal with, is really important.”
Ward has held several executive positions throughout his 35-year career, including at BofA, Citizens, BBVA and Compass Bank. He oversaw the small-business segment, among others, as TD’s mid-south metro regional president, and was a small-business credit executive at BofA. He was president of business banking at Citizens in 2016 and 2017; and at BBVA, he served as global director of the small and medium enterprise segment.
“I've worked at a number of banks in my career and I've been very fortunate, I've seen a lot of different ways that banks deliver for small business,” Ward said. “The thing that really appealed to me about TD is [its focus] on customer service. It is critically important to us – we measure every individual in the organization on customer service delivery, whether that's meeting that service level agreement, or whether that's getting that customer client survey back where they give us a good score.”
“In small business, that's important to us as well. Are we delivering great customer service? Do we have the right products and services? Are we innovative with digital mobile banking, and are we working hard on problem resolution and helping people understand how to overcome obstacles?” he said. “That was one of the things that really resonated with me.”
TD’s small-business segment is significant and growing, Ward said, with around 700,000 customers out of its roughly 10 million customers overall.
In his new role, Ward wants to focus on innovation “from the product front and from the digital front,” specifically around fraud prevention, a top issue for the customers he talks to on a weekly basis as mid-south regional metro president.
For now, he will serve both roles concurrently, he said, without detailing succession plans.
“Every big business was a small business at one point,” he noted. “How can we help them grow, whether they need working capital, equipment or real estate; and then how can we help them move up? When they move up, how can we make sure that we continue to work with them?”
“I want to make sure that we have a good cycle of supporting small businesses in their growth,” Ward said.
