smaller amounts, starting at $1,000, for customers’ simple personal needs such as emergency home and car repairs.
Many rural and indigenous communities across Canada are often left without access to lenders since they have to face long commute times to reach a nearest bank branch. This has made it difficult for them to secure financial products such as loans and mortgages.
According to Canadian Union of Postal Workers, more than 1,200 rural communities in Canada which do not have banks or credit unions, but do have access to post offices, which makes TD’s new loan product much more attractive. Moreover, following the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw millions of people working from home, while providers and goods and services moved their operations online, discussions have arisen among banks if their branches should remain shut after pandemic unwinds.
Canada Post, which has been searching for ways to boost its balance sheet, currently handles limited financial service transactions and this personal loan pilot project is the first of its kind to be offered by the mail company.
“TD is the first bank that Canada Post has partnered with on a loan product,” a spokesperson for the organisation, Phil Legault, said. “However, we have partnered with other financial organizations to offer services such as MoneyGram, and we have partnered with a major Canadian bank to offer our customers access to order foreign currencies.”
