Bank of Montreal

Bank of Montreal’s fiscal second-quarter earnings beat estimates as the waning COVID-19 crisis allowed the lender to set aside less for souring loans and gave a lift to the company’s personal and commercial banking businesses.

Bank of Montreal agreed to sell its Europe, Middle East and Africa asset management unit to Ameriprise Financial for 615 million pounds ($847 million), marking CEO Darryl White’s biggest move yet to trim the bank’s portfolio of noncore businesses.

Canada’s fourth-largest bank is pressing ahead with big technology investments to cut costs and try to generate more revenue from existing customers, said Erminia Johannson, BMO’s head of personal and business banking for the U.S. and Canada.

Fifth Third Bancorp promoted Chief Risk Officer Jamie Leonard to succeed Tayfun Tuzun, who will become chief financial officer of BMO Financial Group on Jan. 1. Both companies made other executive moves at the same time.

With businesses requiring stronger liquidity, BMO will use its online platform and Interac's receivables service to support simultaneous near real-time payment requests to multiple recipients.

Bank of Montreal's top executive says it's a "myth" that his company's commercial lending business is taking big risks and argues the bank will come through the recession with fewer loan losses than rivals.

A sneak peek of a new podcast launching on American Banker later this summer as part of our Leaders Forum, where senior voices and innovators will share their leadership experiences and perspectives on business-critical topics. Arizent CEO Gemma Postlethwaite talks with Ernie Johannson, BMO’s Group Head of North American Personal and Business Banking, about leadership during the Covid-19 crisis, organizational agility and lessons in discernment.

Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal joined their Canadian peers in setting aside record provisions for loan losses as they brace for the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

Bank of Montreal's drive to improve efficiencies has come with a cost: C$357 million, along with more job cuts.

First Horizon, Iberiabank in year's second-biggest bank merger; bank failure in New Jersey is nation's third in a week; smaller banks take a turn swinging the ax; and more from this week's most-read stories.

The team has already built three customer-facing AI tools this year, which it hopes to keep building upon.

Bank of Montreal's push into the U.S. has proved fruitful for its employees — and challenging for a company seeking to get its expenses under control.

In the last two fiscal years, the treasury and payments solutions unit that Haward-Laird runs has had the highest return on equity of all BMO Financial's business lines.

Scotiabank's earnings topped analysts' estimates on a surge in profit in its international-banking division, fueled by a sharpened focus on Latin America. Bank of Montreal, meanwhile, fell short of expectations as growth was more muted at its U.S. personal-and-commercial banking division.

Last year, CEO Darryl White said his goal was for U.S. operations to account for one-third of the bank's earnings in three to five years. It was a matter of months before the goal was reached.

The Canadian parent of BMO Harris Bank in Chicago has named Johannson group head of North American personal banking, an extension of similar executive duties she holds in the U.S.

CEOs at Bank of Montreal and TD Bank Group say they are unlikely to touch the American cannabis industry until the laws change.

Bank of Montreal is getting about half of its U.S. business from outside the company's Midwest stronghold, thanks to a commercial-banking push, Chief Executive Darryl White said.

Consumer lending margins in the United States strengthened at the Canadian bank, which overall saw more growth in business lending than consumer lines in its fiscal first quarter.

AI-powered assistants will change the customer experience for the better, but first they must achieve a more human level of service, executives said during a discussion at Finovate.