If you worked at TD Green Line Investor Services – now called TD Direct Investing, in the 1980s, you needed to get good at memorization. And fast.
TD colleagues who worked at the discount brokerage’s call centres spent months in training, memorizing thousands of stock symbols so they could execute phone orders and provide quotes for clients as quickly as possible. Back then, if a client wanted to buy or sell a stock, they did so by picking up the phone and calling a TD Registered Representative who could execute the trade for them.
“A client might call and want you to place an order, and you had to know that company’s trading symbol because we worked at a speed where we didn’t have time to go look it up in a book,” said Richard Wilks, who joined TD Green Line in 1987.
Compared to today where TD Direct Investing clients can trade stocks and other securities online or with a few taps on a phone, the early days of do-it-yourself trading required the collective efforts of multiple TD colleagues to physically move the trade through the buying process.
Wilks, who started in a call centre and is now the VP of Wealth Business Architecture and Portfolio Management & Governance at TD Direct Investing, said after a TD Green Line colleague took a phone order, they placed a ticket on a conveyor belt with colour-coded instructions: blue for buy, red for sell. The ticket would arrive at a “key puncher,” someone who would type up the order and enter it into a Telex machine – a message transfer device that looked like a cross between an old computer and fax machine. That order, via the Telex, went directly to an exchange.
A floor trader working at the exchange would receive the order, do the transaction, then come back to the machine and send the details of the trade back to TD Green Line.
“The key puncher would get the information of the order and write it up on a ticket, which had multiple pages; they’d rip off the top page for the Bank’s records, and then the bottom page would be organized by alphabetical order and filed in a wooden cabinet,” Wilks said.
“So, when a client called back and said, ‘What did my order get executed at?’ you would look up the stock they were calling about, look for their name, and you’d have all the information for them.”
TD Direct Investing has come a long way since its inception in 1984 as TD Green Line. Technology has made investing more accessible to clients, and the Bank has been at the forefront of changing the way Canadians direct their money.
This year, TD Direct Investing is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Over the last four decades, the Bank has celebrated a lot of firsts: TD launched the first bank-owned self-directed brokerage in Canada, created the first online brokerage platform in the country, and introduced the TD Direct Investing Index, a first-of-its-kind resource that provides insight into the self-directed investment landscape. TD also made history this year when it became the first Canadian bank to introduce partial shares.
“Part of what is great about our business is not only the digital and technical capabilities we’ve developed along the way, but the colleagues that support our clients,” said Scott Ignall, Senior Vice President of TD Direct Investing and Delivery at TD.
“We take a lot of pride in that.”
The early days of TD Direct Investing
In the early days of self-directed investing, call centres were king, and TD Green Line colleagues worked phone lines across Canada in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto.
Before TD Green Line, Canadians looking to invest did so with an advisor, who charged about 3% commission per order, Wilks said. Plus, to have an advisor, clients needed a certain amount of investable assets. TD Green Line changed that, allowing more Canadians to participate in the stock market.
“When we came on the scene you could place a trade for a lower commission and no prerequisite of asset size,” Wilks said.
A significant event during the late 1980s not only changed the economic landscape, it also affected how people thought about investing. The global stock market crash of 1987 helped fuel the growth of TD Green Line, Wilks said, as many investors were frustrated that they couldn’t get a hold of their financial advisors amidst the chaos. In the aftermath, there was a greater interest in taking matters into their own hands and being able to place orders more easily.
In 1988, TD Green Line expanded its telephone hours of operation to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
As the business grew and evolved, so did its technology. In the early 1990s, TD Green Line launched the first computer trading service in Canada and rolled out touch-tone phone trading and phone access to international markets. In 1992, Wilks was tapped to run a call centre in Toronto, the largest in the country.
“We would answer calls and do all the things that clients can do now online,” he said.
A few years later, Wilks was once again tasked with a new job. This time, he was asked to join a committee to help oversee the acquisition of Waterhouse Investor Services, a chain of discount brokerages in the U.S. – a move that would ultimately forever change the direct investing landscape at the Bank.
Leading the charge: Leaning into technology and the evolution of TD Direct Investing
The year 1996 was a big one for the Bank. TD Green Line launched WebBroker – Canada's first online brokerage platform – and bought Waterhouse Investor Services in a deal valued at USD $525-million, which was the Bank’s biggest transaction at the time. The move was led by TD executive Keith Gray, who Wilks said saw great potential in the acquisition.
“The rationale made sense, because they [Waterhouse] were very good on customer service, but didn't really have the technology,” Wilks said.
“We were starting to build our technology and web presence, and our call centers were very efficient. So, the merger was a great idea, and it gave us a footprint in the U.S.”
Lawrence M. Waterhouse, Jr., the founder of Waterhouse, also spoke highly of the deal to the New York Times in 1996.
“We believe that Green Line's proven leadership as the largest discount broker in Canada, its commitment to customer service and its state-of-the-art technology will make this a winning business combination,” Waterhouse said to the outlet.
In 1999, TD Green Line Investor Services was renamed TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage.
Entering the 2000s
Heading into the 2000s, TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage continued to innovate and grow. Technology was taking off and new tools were unveiled. In 2006, a platform catered to active traders launched, allowing clients to view quotes, streaming charts, and watchlists.
A few years later in 2009, TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage released the "thinkorswim" platform for active stock and options traders, which was followed by the launch of the TD app in 2011, allowing clients to trade on the go. TD Waterhouse Discount Brokerage evolved into TD Direct Investing, as it is known today. A year later, Advanced Dashboard was introduced, further enhancing the trading experience.
Still, having call centres readily available remained essential, offering support not only when clients needed it, but as a way to help ensure a personalized, human touch in every interaction. The expertise and dedication of the team helped set the service apart, making it a key part of the overall client experience. In 2011, Anna Iacobelli was hired as the VP of TD Direct Investing and oversaw a team of more than 600 investment representatives at a call centre in Toronto.
“We were very focused on the client experience, so it was all about the speed of answering the phone. Because in this business, the market moves quickly, and every second is a trade,” Iacobelli said. “We needed to make sure that we were optimizing our service level to be the best.”
Under the guidance of Paul Clark, the former President of TD Direct Investing and current Head of Private Wealth Management and Financial Planning at TD Wealth Management, the WebBroker platform got a facelift and was redesigned in 2015. The goal was to improve the experience of online trading for clients – and it proved to be a success. The relaunched tool was recognized by The Globe and Mail as the “highest rated online brokerage among the banks.”
The future of TD Direct Investing
For Ignall, Senior Vice President of TD Direct Investing and Delivery at TD, keeping clients' needs at the forefront is paramount for the business and its success. He thinks about new ways for TD Direct Investing to innovate, and how to offer more value to customers.
A recent example of bringing a new offering to the table was the 2024 launch of partial share trading, which allows investors to buy and sell fractions of stocks or exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
“We are the first Canadian bank to offer that, so it’s something we are very proud of,” Ignall said.
Wilks has been around the Bank since the 1980s, and has seen the evolution of TD Direct Investing up close. While technology and processes have changed, and new players have entered the direct investing space, TD Direct Investing remains a key player with its tools and services, he said.
Today, WebBroker is one of the several TD Direct Investing tools available for clients. There’s also TD Active Trader, TD Easy Trade TM, Advanced Dashboard and, of course, telephone services.
“Direct investing is now a very mature industry, and there are a lot of competitors out there,” Wilks said. “But we’ve got name recognition, and we’ve accomplished a lot of firsts in this business.”
Ignall takes pride in leading a division of the Bank that has such a storied history. He sees the past as something to be proud of, and the future bright. The Bank values that clients choose to invest with TD Direct Investing, he said, and takes the responsibility to serve them very seriously.
“It’s exciting to continue to innovate, while providing a stable, secure, and robust environment for investors,” Ignall said.
“We’re always putting the customer first and strive to ensure that all their interactions are meaningful and productive. We want to help them reach their financial goals – no matter how big or small.”