Versabank

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VersaBank, formerly Pacific & Western Bank of Canada, is a Canadian chartered bank that was founded in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in 1980 as a trust company. It later moved its head offices to London, Ontario, and on August 1, 2002, it was granted a Schedule I Canadian chartered bank licence by the Canadian federal government, the first in approximately 18 years. The bank is publicly traded as VB on the Toronto Stock Exchange. VersaBank is a branchless financial institution, choosing to invest instead in a technology based platform. Entrepreneur and founder of the bank, David Taylor, designed the electronic branchless platform. Beginning in 1993, the existing Pacific & Western Bank, a small trust company with six branches and a need for capital investment, reconfigured itself into a branchless bank based on online banking. By 2013 the bank became Canada's tenth largest publicly traded bank when it began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange. In 2017 the bank completed a revision of its ownership structure that included a merger with its largest stockholder, PWC Capital, reported to be "the first merger between a Schedule 1 bank and a holding company operating under the Canadian Business Corporations Act