MONCTON – TD Bank plans to create up to 440 high-skilled jobs with an average annual compensation of $65,000 at a new finance centre at Champlain Place in Dieppe, it was announced Thursday.

These jobs are in addition to the 575 full-time call centre jobs announced last May.

“We’re looking more at people who have Chartered Accountant credentials or finance degrees from the university or the many high-quality colleges here. So, we’re going to be requiring all of these outlets to supply the labour for this,” said Frank McKenna, the former New Brunswick Premier who is now TD Bank’s Deputy Chairman.

“This represents what we call a whole new vertical, a chance for New Brunswick to grow a whole new sector of the economy and bring jobs in from outside,” he said.

The finance centre will provide services including general accounting, reporting and transaction processing. Recruitment for all the jobs will begin in September.

People will not need to be bilingual for these jobs because it’s “not a critical element” for these non-client facing roles, McKenna said.

AUDIO: Frank McKenna talks about the evolution of the call-centre industry

TD is expecting to complete hiring in three years, he said. The finance centre’s manager has already moved to Moncton from Toronto.

“There’ll be some people moving here, if people wish to move here they can,” said McKenna. “But I think it’s highly likely that almost all of these jobs will be filled from this community or from New Brunswickers coming back home.”

The new corporate office will include both the call centre and the finance centre. TD is spending around $50-million for the building. It will open in January 2019.

Champlain Place owner Cadillac Fairview (CF), which is also the real estate arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, said in a release on its website that it’s investing $25-million into the redevelopment.

Brian Salpeter, CF’s Senior VP for Development, said the move would transform the property.

“The redevelopment of the former Sears space at CF Champlain will transform the building into a visually appealing, efficient and modern workplace,” he said at Thursday’s announcement.

RELATED: TD Opening Call Centre in Moncton

McKenna said TD chose Greater Moncton for its new corporate office partly because it was already planning to build the call centre. The bank looked at placing its call centre at the former Moncton High School building but decided it needed a lot more space if it wants to move its financial-services operations.

“It’s a consolidation of jobs. We have 85,000 employees, so we’re always looking for ways to be more efficient, so that’s what this represents, a rationalization of functions across different parts of the bank and putting them in one place to make them more efficient,” he said.

“We were in [Moncton] and all of a sudden it looked attractive to double our space and using the overhead for a much larger TD presence, so that became an attractive feature. And Moncton’s just an attractive place to do business.”

John Wishart, the CEO of the Greater Moncton Chamber of Commerce said it’s great that higher paying jobs are being created, but it’s important to now look for the talent to fill them.

“Labour force development is such an important thing and such a key to any job attraction efforts. That’s something from the chamber’s perspective we would like to really work on,” he said.

“I think we probably will need to import some talent to fill those positions and it also means our education system tailoring everything from programs to feedback. If we know we have 440 jobs here, 575 jobs over there, what skill sets do they need to fill those and can the NBCCs and CCNBs play a role in that?” he said.

Opportunities New Brunswick (ONB) is investing a total of $15.6-million to support the bank, with $8.8 million of that in the form of a forgivable loan to support the finance centre.

“The way that it’s structured is it’s a forgivable loan and there will be benchmarks that have to be met for TD to be able to get the incentive turned into a subsidy,” said Premier Brian Gallant.

The loan will be disbursed in stages as TD achieves milestones. TD will receive $2.9 million once it has started operations at the new centre, $2.9 million when it employs 100 finance employees in New Brunswick, and $3 million when it has hired 250 finance workers in the province. TD will earn full forgiveness once it meets the full employment expectations.

The province’s Post-Secondary, Training and Labour department also invested a total of $2.23 million in the project.

The New Brunswick government is expecting to gain an additional $569-million in GDP over 10 years, as well as $68.9-million in total tax revenues. It projects nearly $400-million worth of wages and salary will be created by the jobs over a decade.

The new corporate office won’t affect TD’s presence in other parts of Greater Moncton, McKenna said.