TD ousts CIBC as top credit card issuer
Acquisition of Aerogold Visa, expanded lending in the U.S. snags bank top spot in Canada
Toronto-Dominion Bank, which has bought about $17 billion of creditcard assets since 2011, displaced Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce as the country’s top issuer, according to the Nilson Report.
Toronto-Dominion captured the No. 1 spot with $14.7 billion in outstanding balances for 2013, the card industry newsletter said in its April issue. Royal Bank of Canada ranked second with $13.4 billion, while CIBC, the country’s top card issuer since at least 2005, slipped to third with $10.9 billion in outstanding balances, the report said.
Toronto-Dominion moved up with the acquisition in December of about $3.3 billion of receivables from CIBC’s Aerogold Visa portfolio after loyalty-program company Aimia Inc. chose the Toronto-based lender as its primary partner. Aimia previously had a 22-year exclusive relationship with CIBC.
Toronto-Dominion acquired Bank of America Corp.’s $7.36-billion MBNA Canadian MasterCard portfolio in December 2011 and agreed to purchase the $495 million privatelabel card portfolio of HSBC Holdings Plc. in March 2013. The lender has also expanded in the U.S., buying $5.7 billion of U.S. card balances from Target Corp. last year.
Bank of Nova Scotia, which this month identified credit cards as a priority, ranked fourth with $10.5 billion in outstanding balances, followed by Bank of Montreal with $7.85 billion.
Royal Bank was largest based on total volume and purchase transactions, the report said. The Torontobased bank also had the highest increase in credit-card purchase transactions from a year earlier.