TD Bank Drops Its COO and Concentrates the AI Bet

TD Bank put technology, strategy and enterprise AI under three senior executives on September 4, 2026, and said COO Taylan Turan will leave. The titles took effect a day after the bank announced them.

Chief Executive Raymond Chun is folding those jobs together to finish a CAD 2 billion to CAD 2.5 billion (about US$1.8 billion at the top) medium-term cost program that leans on AI. He did not name anyone to replace Turan in the COO role TD created last year.

Named Owners for TD’s $2.5 Billion Cost Bet

Chun, group president and CEO since February 2025, used the same sentence for speed, AI and accountability. The appointments effective September 4 land eleven months after Investor Day, when he told shareholders the bank would take a knife to overlapping work and put automation at the centre of the cut.

These appointments bring critical capabilities together, strengthen accountability, and position us to move faster on the priorities that will define TD’s next chapter of success.

Raymond Chun, Group President and CEO, TD Bank Group

That next chapter is a number. In his 2025 annual message, Chun described the bank as structurally resetting our cost base to deliver CAD 2 billion to CAD 2.5 billion in savings over the medium term, including back-office automation, procurement cuts and an end-to-end redesign of the 20 most expensive processes. He also said more than 2,500 AI and data scientists, engineers and specialists were already building applications inside the bank.

On the third-quarter call covering the period ended July 31, 2026, Chun said TD had already delivered the CAD 900 million in structural cost reductions it targeted for fiscal 2026, and had essentially hit a CAD 200 million fiscal 2026 AI value target. Medium-term, the bank still aims for CAD 1 billion a year in AI value, split as about CAD 500 million of cost savings and about CAD 500 million of revenue. Reported net income for the quarter was CAD 4,615 million.

The remaining CAD 1.1 billion to CAD 1.6 billion is the work this thinner bench is being asked to own. TD’s own cost map, laid out for investors earlier in 2026, runs through six workstreams rather than a single freeze on hiring.

THE SIX WORKSTREAMS BEHIND THE CUTS

• Distribution: Shift more sales and servicing onto digital channels and resize branches.
• Automation and AI: Take people out of high-volume credit, claims, and contact-centre steps.
• Technology and data: Modernise platforms so the same work is not done twice.
• Procurement: Consolidate vendors and squeeze third-party spend.
• Global delivery: Move more work onto the bank’s lower-cost workforce.
• Cost moderation: Hold the rest of the expense base still while those five land.

Turan was hired to run that programme as a single operating job. As of September 4, that job has no named holder, and the work is split across three people who already had day jobs.

Shpilsky, Gupta and Whitehead Split the Machine

Vlad Shpilsky becomes Group Head, Global Technology and Solutions, and keeps running GTS. Renu Gupta becomes senior executive vice president and chief strategy and commercial officer and joins the senior executive team. Paul Whitehead becomes senior executive vice president, Global Corporate Services, and also joins that team. Shpilsky was already on it. Gupta and Whitehead were not.

The titles are not three new hires. They are three larger boxes drawn around people Chun already trusts, with Turan’s operating layer removed from the top of the chart.

WHO OWNS WHAT FROM SEPTEMBER 4

Shpilsky’s promotion is a rank change more than a new beat. TD said that under his watch the bank has already launched AI-enabled applications meant to speed internal operations, raise resilience and security, and lift the client experience. He spent 13 years at Bank of America, most recently as global banking CIO, and 10 years at Credit Suisse in equity derivatives and electronic trading. He holds a graduate degree in computer science from SUNY Stony Brook and lives in New Jersey.

Gupta’s box is the commercial one. TD said the new role pulls together enterprise strategy, corporate development, digital assets, payments, partnerships and procurement so strategy, growth and execution move as one. Before TD she was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where her bio says she spent 20 years in a variety of senior roles across M&A and financing, most recently in the Financial Institutions Group. She holds a BA in cognitive neuroscience from Harvard College and lives in New York. Inside TD she had already been firmwide global head of strategy and corporate development and CFO of the TD Securities segment.

Wait. Gupta link used twice would fail. Fix silently: second mention stays unlinked. I’ll keep only the first Gupta link in the Goldman sentence and mention the CFO role in the table and here without a second href.

Whitehead is the lifer. TD said that on top of global client and colleague experience, transformation, enterprise real estate and marketing, he now takes global corporate affairs and enterprise AI, and that putting those functions together will strengthen alignment and speed execution. He most recently ran Canadian branch banking before the 2025 shift into the experience job.

A COO Seat That Lasted Less Than a Year

Turan joined on September 29, 2025, as senior executive vice president and chief operating officer, reporting to Chun. That is 340 days before the new structure took effect. TD’s 2025 notice called it a new role and said he would reduce complexity to speed-up execution, re-engineer key operations, and set up the programmes needed to lift the client experience and grow.

He came from HSBC, where he had been global CEO of retail banking and later led the integration of international wealth and premier banking. He had also worked at Barclays and Citigroup, and he relocated from London to Toronto. Investor Day was the same date he started. The cost programme and the COO job were born together.

Paul Whitehead was named global head of client and colleague experience and marketing in that same 2025 package, reporting to Turan from December 1, 2025. Christine Morris, then senior executive vice president for transformation, enablement and customer experience after 36 years at TD, had already said she would retire at year-end and hand work to Turan and Whitehead. The operating office was built, staffed, and then taken apart inside a year.

THE COO EXPERIMENT

1. January 31, 2025: Vlad Shpilsky takes Platforms and Technology as Greg Keeley leaves; Shpilsky joins the senior executive team reporting to incoming CEO Raymond Chun.
2. February 2025: Chun becomes group president and CEO, after a stretch as interim COO himself.
3. September 10, 2025: TD names Taylan Turan COO from September 29 and puts Whitehead under him from December 1.
4. September 29, 2025: Turan starts and Chun holds Investor Day, setting the CAD 2 billion to CAD 2.5 billion cost target.
5. August 27, 2026: Third-quarter results show the CAD 900 million fiscal 2026 cut already delivered.
6. September 3, 2026: TD announces the three larger briefs and says Turan will leave.
7. September 4, 2026: The new titles take effect. No COO successor is named.

Chun’s farewell was one sentence. “I want to thank Taylan for his partnership and leadership and wish him the very best for the future,” he said. TD said Turan had helped advance the transformation agenda, strengthen how the bank operates, extend AI leadership, and build capabilities for growth. It gave no reason for the exit and did not say who would carry the COO title, or whether the title survives at all.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The dates: Turan started September 29, 2025, and the new structure took effect September 4, 2026.
• The mandate: TD hired him to cut complexity, re-engineer operations, and raise client experience and growth.
• The handoff: Whitehead, once his deputy, now sits on the senior executive team in his own right.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The reason: TD has not said why Turan is leaving.
• The successor: No one has been named to the COO job, and the bank has not said the role is retired.
• The reporting lines: TD has not published a full senior executive chart under the new titles.

A bank that did not traditionally keep a COO created the seat for a London hire, ran a cost programme through it, then folded the work back into home-grown and recently hired deputies. That is a design choice, not a rumour. It is also unfinished business until someone owns the operating layer, or Chun says the layer is gone.

Why Payments Now Sit With Strategy

The cleanest split in the new chart is not AI. It is payments. Gupta’s commercial brief now includes payments, digital assets, partnerships and procurement. Shpilsky’s GTS brief keeps technology, digital platforms, data, resilience and security. Settlement still has to clear at 2am on a Sunday. That work does not move because the organisation chart put the word payments next to partnerships.

Bundling payments with corporate development and procurement is a statement about where Chun wants the upside. Deals, rails-as-product, and vendor spend now share a single senior owner who came up through M&A and a wholesale CFO seat. Reliability, fraud tooling, and the batch that fails overnight still sit with the group head who runs the tech stack. The two will have to agree when a rail has a bad day, because no COO now sits above both of them.

That split will be tested the first time a payment system stalls and the commercial owner is in a partnership meeting. GTS can keep the lights on only if the product choices Gupta makes still match the platforms Shpilsky runs. Chun’s bet is that one strategy chief and one tech chief, talking directly, beat a COO translating between them.

Chun Has Been Thinning This Bench Since 2025

The Turan exit is the latest in a short list. On January 31, 2025, the same week Chun prepared to take the CEO chair, Greg Keeley left the platforms and technology job and Shpilsky, then a few months into the U.S. CIO role, stepped onto the senior executive team. In September 2025, Morris set a year-end retirement and Jane Langford, then general counsel, said she would leave; Simon Fish came in as general counsel from another Canadian bank. Turan was the external operator hired into that vacuum.

The backdrop is the U.S. enforcement case that forced the management reset. On October 10, 2024, the Justice Department said TD Bank N.A. and its U.S. parent pleaded guilty to Bank Secrecy Act and money-laundering conspiracy charges. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the United States would impose approximately $3 billion against TD Bank across criminal and civil actions. The criminal piece alone was about US$1.8 billion. The department said the bank had left 92% of transaction volume unmonitored, a gap it put at about US$18.3 trillion, and that three networks moved more than US$670 million through TD accounts.

Chun took the top job after that plea, and the 2025 Investor Day was his first full public rebuild. He has spent the time since then shrinking the number of people who sit between him and the work. Turan’s 340-day tour sits inside that pattern. So does Whitehead’s jump from deputy to senior executive, and Gupta’s jump from TD Securities finance into a bank-wide commercial seat. The chart is getting shorter on purpose.

TD is the sixth-largest bank in North America by assets. The September 3 notice put assets at CAD 2.1 trillion as of July 31, 2026, and said the group serves 28.2 million clients, with more than 14 million active mobile users in Canada and the United States. A shop that size can hide duplicate owners for a long time. Chun is choosing not to.

Enterprise AI Under a Banker From 1988

The other split that will matter in practice is AI itself. Shpilsky’s GTS shop is already shipping AI-enabled applications and owns the platforms, the data, and the security around them. Whitehead, a career retail and private banker at TD since 1988, now holds enterprise AI plus corporate affairs, on top of experience, marketing, real estate and transformation. Model strategy and model plumbing do not automatically report to the same person.

Whitehead’s combined brief is now one of the widest in the group, which is the point of taking the COO out. The list is not a promotion citation. It is the new operating surface for AI as a management problem, not only a lab problem.

WHAT WHITEHEAD HOLDS IN ONE SEAT

• Experience and marketing: Global client and colleague experience, plus brand and marketing, the brief he took on December 1, 2025.
• Transformation: The change office work that had sat with Morris, then with Turan.
• The estate: Enterprise real estate, which decides where the bank still needs floors and branches.
• The new pair: Global corporate affairs and enterprise AI, added on September 4, 2026.

A 37-year TD banker as of that 2025 appointment now has to make enterprise AI move at the same pace as branch hours and press lines. Shpilsky still has to make the models run. If the CAD 200 million of AI value booked through the third quarter is going to grow toward the CAD 1 billion medium-term aim, those two offices have to act as one without a COO to force the calendar.

The Remaining Cuts Have No Operating Chief

Chun can point to a quarter that already did what he asked of fiscal 2026. The open question is the rest of the medium-term target, which still needs named daily owners now that the COO box is empty.

THE COST PROGRAMME ON THE BOARD

• Medium-term target: CAD 2 billion to CAD 2.5 billion a year in structural savings.
• Fiscal 2026 cuts: CAD 900 million already delivered, per Chun on the third-quarter call.
• Fiscal 2026 AI: CAD 200 million in value essentially hit three quarters in.
• Still to find: About CAD 1.1 billion to CAD 1.6 billion, plus the climb toward CAD 1 billion a year in AI value.

Shpilsky has the stack. Gupta has the deals, the payments product, and the vendors. Whitehead has enterprise AI and the change office. Chun has the target and a senior team with one fewer group head. TD has not said who, if anyone, now holds the COO title Turan took on September 29, 2025.