Dive Brief:

• TD Bank is launching a technology hub in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and plans to add 200 new roles in the region over the next two years, the bank announced Tuesday.
• The Toronto-based lender said it aims to tap into the South Florida market’s growing community of tech and innovation talent. 
• The announcement comes as the bank continues to execute on its plan to recruit 2,000 technology workers with skills in DevOps, cloud, machine learning and automation this year.

Dive Insight:

"Increasing our job creation commitment in Florida is the next step in TD Bank's investment," Nick Miceli, the bank's regional president for Metro Florida said. "These new roles will help benefit South Florida's growing tech hub and demand for skilled IT workers.”

The bank said last summer it plans to bring 250 new positions in operations and stores to the Jacksonville area over two years.

TD Bank’s focus on Florida comes as traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley and San Francisco are experiencing an exodus in technology workers.

“There’s been a boom in tech jobs, and it’s booming more outside California,” Richard Florida, a professor at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management, told The Wall Street Journal last month.

Net tech employment, including new software engineers, app developers and other tech workers entering the market, grew twice as fast in Texas and Florida in 2021 as it did in California, according to a report by IT trade group CompTIA. 

The pandemic’s acceleration of digitalization, combined with remote work, has contributed to a tech worker migration away from tech-sector hubs, Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at Brookings, told the Journal. 

“What’s more, firms’ insatiable need for digital talent has motivated many coastal firms to hire in the interior or move satellite offices there,” Muro said.

TD Bank said its South Florida tech workers will follow one of the bank’s hybrid work models.

“At TD, our Future Workplace strategy will reimagine the way we work — balancing the need to continue to compete and win in the marketplace, with the significant benefits of flexibility and remote work,” the bank said in a statement.

TD Bank said it entered a multiyear partnership with the Alan B. Levan Nova Southeastern University Broward Center of Innovation, a tech accelerator and startup incubator, with the hopes the tie-up will help it attract and develop local talent.

“A growing nexus for tech talent and innovation, including students, academia, early-stage innovators, venture capitalists, and economic development experts, the Levan Center acts as a central catalyst to help innovators thrive,” the bank said in a statement.

TD Bank’s efforts to tap Florida’s tech workforce comes as it is eyeing a Southeast expansion through an acquisition of Memphis, Tennessee-based First Horizon Bank.

The deal, announced in February, would expand TD’s footprint in the Southeast and make the U.S. arm of the Canadian bank the sixth-largest retail bank in the country, with roughly $614 billion in assets, the company said.