Already a market leader in Chicago and Milwaukee, BMO Harris Bank is eyeing "tuck-in" acquisitions in St. Louis, Minneapolis and Kansas City in its quest to achieve top five deposit share in all of its major markets.
The Chicago-based unit of the $525 billion-asset Bank of Montreal has the No. 2 market share in Chicago and its outer suburbs and the No. 1 deposit share in all of Wisconsin, thanks to its $3.9 billion acquisition of Marshall & Ilsley Bank in Milwaukee last year.
In slides presented at its investor day in Chicago Tuesday, the company said that its strategy going forward is to "optimize" its branch network in those markets while beefing up its presence in its other midwestern markets.
The company disclosed last week that it is closing 24 of its roughly 660 branches, including 17 in Wisconsin, where it has the most overlap following the M&I acquisition.
BMO Harris has the No. 4 market share position in Minneapolis, with 2.5% of deposits, and ranks No. 5 in St. Louis, with 3.9% of deposits, but it still trails the market leaders by a wide margin. In Minneapolis, Wells Fargo (WFC) and U.S. Bancorp (USB) control nearly 70% of the deposits and in St. Louis U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America (BAC) have nearly 30% of the deposits.
The bank is looking to narrow the gap in those markets and Kansas City, where it ranks No. 12, with 1.6% of the region's deposits.
To help further capture market share, BMO Harris also said in the slide presentation that it intends to roll out M&I Bank's mobile technology — with remote deposit capture — to legacy Harris Bank customers in July and that it is replacing its automated teller machines with image-enabled ATMs.
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