Ask Camesia Smith what she wanted to do for a living as a child, and the answer was to be a nurse. “But as I got older, I realized that I don’t like blood,” she says with a laugh. “So, I thought ‘This might not be the right fit.’”
Nursing is, of course, a profession that attracts those who are passionate about helping people. It’s perhaps not surprising that Smith has spent nearly two decades doing just that with TD. It’s something she’s particularly proud of today as Regional Manager of Black Community Business Development for TD.
“The reward for me personally is the ability to help others,” Smith says. “I love assisting customers, whether it’s for their personal financial needs or their business Needs.”
Born in Jamaica, Smith’s early years were spent helping run the family’s hardware store, which gave her invaluable insights into the challenges and rewards of running a small business. After immigrating with her family to Canada, she first joined the bank part-time as a teller after high school while studying accounting at Ryerson University. Looking back, she loved the experience of meeting customers face to face on a daily basis.
“I interacted a lot with customers coming into the branch,” Smith says of those early years. “And I quickly realized my passion for working with customers. I enjoyed helping them with their finances and money management. I guess that stemmed from growing up in a business where budgeting and money management was Critical.”
TD’s Black Customer Experience Strategy was launched at the end of 2020 during the COVID-19 Pandemic. However, TD’s support for the Black community spans over a decade. The past few years, Smith suggests, have turned a much-needed focus on the historic injustices faced by the Black community in North America.
“The pandemic brought many things to light,” Smith notes. “Such as inequities and racial discrimination. Granted this isn’t new, but the pandemic forced people and organizations to listen and pay attention.
“Social media also played a big role in bringing things to the forefront,” she continues. “With that, TD as an organization took a step back – it was a reflection point for us to say, ‘As a bank, we need to do more for Black and diverse communities.’ I was really proud to see, going into my 21st year, the level of commitment that TD has made.”
As noted, that commitment is not new for TD. Smith, who joined the Black Customer Experience team in early 2021, notes that the bank’s journey towards diversity and inclusion first took a big leap forward in the early 2000s.
“There have been gaps, but we have taken the initiative to address those gaps through proactive outreach to the Black community,” she acknowledges. “We started with a research-based approach. We started by conducting research into the needs of the Black community. What was revealed from that data helped us formulate a new customer-focused strategy.”
“TD has been supporting the Black community for many years. It was in 2020 that we made the commitment to do more for our Black customers, by bringing the Bank to the community and ensuring financial inclusion”, Smith continues.
That effort starts with what Smith calls the “the three big Cs”: customers, community, and colleagues.
“With ‘colleagues’ we made a commitment to increase representation internally,” she says. “Our research showed that approximately 40 per cent of the folks that we connected with from Black communities say they want to see themselves represented in their advisors. Representation is a huge part of that, as such we want to ensure that we hire folks from diverse communities to work with our customers.”
In explaining “community”, Smith says it is crucial that TD continues to connect with Black community leaders, to gain insight into the challenges faced when seeking financial advice and understanding pain points experienced along their financial journey.
Through the TD Ready Commitment, the bank’s corporate citizenship platform, and through relationships with Black-led, Black-serving professional organizations, Smith says the bank has learned how to better promote diversity and inclusion and where to provide more support.
Support is needed when it comes to financial literacy. Limited financial acumen is an area that Black communities had identified as one that impacts their financial future.
“That lack of acumen is often no fault of their own,” Smith says. “They haven’t always had access to the information they need. Oftentimes business owners are very good at their craft – the services they provide and the products that they make. However they lack the necessary financial acumen needed due to the absence of generational support.
“Therefore, one of our strategies is to bring that financial literacy to the community.”
As for the other big C, Smith says simply: “Customers are the base of the whole strategy.” While she has come a long way with TD, when one looks at where Smith started, it’s her early years that continue to inspire her today. Customers, Smith happily admits, are in many ways still the truly rewarding part of the job.
“What makes my day” she says, “is when someone says to me ‘Thank you, that was really helpful.’ The goal is not to, ‘sell a bank product’ for example. My goal is to go be a trusted advisor and help clients along their financial journey.”
Read more from TD and Black History Month here.
