“This is a difficult chapter in our Bank’s history. These failures took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders,” CEO Bharat Masrani said in a statement.
TD also agreed to pay $3bn in combined penalties to US banking regulators, the Justice Department and the Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
The deal resolved investigations by the Justice Department, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. It also included the imposition of independent monitoring.
‘Most convenient bank’
TD failed to monitor more than $18 trillion in customer activity for about a decade, enabling three money-laundering networks to transfer illicit funds through accounts at the bank, US authorities said, describing the issues as pervasive.
Bank employees “openly joked” about the lack of compliance on multiple occasions, Garland told reporters during a briefing on the plea deal.
TD Bank’s issues were known at every level of the bank, authorities said. In some cases, TD did not flag suspicious activity until law enforcement raised attention to it and at times, tellers accepted gift cards as bribes.
“It is no wonder, then, that the motto ‘America’s most convenient bank’ was used as a joke among employees to describe TD Bank being convenient for criminals,” said US Attorney for New Jersey Philip Sellinger.
‘Worst-case scenario’
An asset cap is “worst-case scenario” for TD, said Cormark Securities analyst Lemar Persaud, prior to the details of the plea deal being announced. The bank had already set aside $3bn for the fine.
Persaud drew a parallel with Wells Fargo, which has a $1.95 trillion asset cap in place following a fake accounts scandal, which has constrained its earnings. An asset cap would also constrain TD’s profits, but to a lesser extent than it did for Wells Fargo, he said.
The TD probe has led to “significant underperformance of the stock and, we believe, the retirement of the current CEO Bharat Masrani,” Persaud said.
TD is Canada’s second-biggest bank and the 10th-largest in the US. The lender first revealed it was responding to inquiries from regulators and law enforcement last year, just months after it terminated a $13bn acquisition of regional lender First Horizon.
Federal authorities began probing TD’s internal controls after agents discovered a Chinese criminal operation bribed employees and brought large bags of cash into branches to launder millions of dollars in fentanyl sales through TD branches in New York and New Jersey, a source confirmed.
TD has spent millions to strengthen its compliance programmes, fired dozens of staff at its US branches and named its Canadian personal banking head Ray Chun as its new CEO, distancing its new chief from the money laundering scandal.
CEO Masrani, who has been at the helm for nearly a decade and previously led its US operations, will retire next year. Masrani has said he takes full responsibility for the money laundering issues that have plagued the bank.