How BMO is Leaning into Fundamentals to Drive More U.S. Deposits
By Steve Cocheo, Senior Executive Editor at The Financial Brand
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BMO’s U.S. operation is beginning a multi-year refocus and revamp of the way — and where — it does business in the U.S.
Bank leadership has set ambitious goals, including a 12% return on equity on U.S. operations while maintaining sustained profitable growth. Aron Levine, group head and president of U.S. banking, noted these goals during the company’s investor day in late March. Levine joined BMO in July 2025 from a 30-year career at Bank of America. BMO U.S. ranks 15th among U.S. banking operations by assets.
Key target: Essential for achieving these goals is acquiring more deposits through both branch and digital channels, in the face of both the continuing growth of many fintech players and the renewed emphasis on branching by some of the other U.S. giants.
Among the key players in the deposit push is Jesse Slovenec, a BMO veteran, who is now head of U.S. personal and business banking customer acquisition and acquisition segments. She was interviewed during The Financial Brand Forum 2026.
Slovenec’s team plays a major role in the strategies behind the Canada-based company’s approach to the U.S., as well as assisting in the execution of strategies where they meet customers and prospects.
BMO, based in Chicago, has banked U.S. markets for many years, but has been making major adjustments to how it does this. This includes developing new competitive tools and changing the bank’s U.S. footprint to maximize impact.
A core element in Slovenec’s portfolio: BMO’s value proposition. “How do you get customers to want to come bank with you? What do you stand for as a bank?” says Slovenec. “Why would I pick BMO versus another bank?”
Need to Know:
- BMO made a major optimization move last October, agreeing to sell 138 branches in the center of the U.S. First -Citizens Bank and Trust is buying the offices in N.D., S.D., Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Idaho, as well as a handful of others. (The sale is pending.)
- In tandem, BMO announced plans to open approximately 150 new branches over the next five years in core markets. The bulk will be sited in California, with a secondary thrust in Arizona.
- The refocus to more emphasis on California builds on BMO’s acquisition of Bank of the West in 2023. The company currently has 220 branches in California and expects to have 360 in 2030.
- “Densification” in the West is intended to boost state-level deposit share significantly. Officials have noted that the bank’s California deposit market share is currently only about half the bank’s market share in its Midwest footprint.
Building Deposits on the California Expansion
Slovenec says BMO has found that accounts originated in branches typically have a better payoff for the bank.
She says that the customers brought into branch channel and the digital channel differ substantially.
Key insight: “You’re going to attrit a lot more customers in the digital space. A digital customer is often just looking for either the best rate or the lowest fee,” Slovenec explains. Sometimes they never actually fund the account they opened online.
By contrast, customers who open an account in a branch typically fund their accounts immediately and the face-to-face interaction enables branch staff to cross sell additional products.
“We’re working to make our digital onboarding more impactful. But you’ll still not get the same results if they’re not actually in front of a banker, where that live relationship building can take place from the get-go,” says Slovenec. Similarly, the bank has found that digital accounts acquired from customers who don’t reside near a BMO branch tend to be less sticky, and are often hot money.
Key challenge in the west: Slovenec says that something that sets California apart from other markets is a much stronger element of customer enrollment via digital banking. This goes beyond a generational influence; it’s the geography. She says the bank has noticed this pattern since acquiring Bank of the West and running the California footprint since then.
She says winning more share in California will depend on enhancing the digital experience, and the potential for cross-selling thereby, even as the branch network grows denser.
California is worth the candle. During the investor day, BMO’s Aron Levine noted that California offers the potential for 2.5 times the deposits than the bank’s Midwest markets.
Read more:
An Entrée Worth Giving Away for its Potential
Bank at work programs have been around the industry for decades, though you don’t hear about them as much as you once did.
For BMO, it’s been a successful tactic in the U.S. that Slovenec says the bank is planning to lean into further. The general idea of such programs is that businesses can agree to introduce their employees to the bank offering the program. Usually, exclusive price breaks or other benefits are part of the package.
For BMO, Bank at Work “is a massive acquisition channel,” says Slovenec. She can’t share specifics about balances and such, but she can illustrate the significance of the technique.
About nine out of ten customers who come to BMO via its current Bank at Work program are brand new to the bank, according to Slovenec. It can be a key way to drive more prospects into BMO.
For branch staffers, she adds, the Bank at Work program has been a key lever for developing new business that they can proactively take out into the community to offer to local businesses. This tool is available all the time, rather than being dependent on limited-time marketing offers or periodic campaigns. Branches are even permitted to do some customization in local-level promotion.
“It can give them an opportunity when they’re trying to meet their numbers as a branch,” says Slovenec.
Often, once a company is willing to offer the bank’s products to its employees — including direct deposit, of course — the branch will hold an event, such as a “lunch and learn,” where the basics of the program are presented. Employees are encouraged to enroll on their smart phones at the event. (This can also help with companies with employees who are out of the bank’s footprint.) Later on they can visit a branch for a full financial review, where accounts can be completed and other services offered.
BMO approaches this differently on both sides of the border. In Canada, companies pay something to offer the bank’s products to their employees, but in the U.S. BMO has offered it cost-free to employers. It enhances the relationship where the company already obtains credit and other business services from BMO. In other cases, says Slovenec, the program provides an entrée to BMO that sometimes results in new business-banking opportunities when a company starts looking for a new bank.
A key selling point has been reducing employee financial stress. Part of this is through favorable pricing, saving them money, and part of it is through financial education. Slovenec adds that bank at work programs can also generate health savings account business.
Read more: The Classic Checking Account Doesn’t Meet the Needs of Today’s Consumers. Here’s How to Fix It
Evolving Bank at Work as ‘One Client’
Key opportunity. BMO wants to build on the potential already exhibited by the Bank at Work program. It is in the midst of rebranding Bank at Work and will be rolling out that new iteration later this year.
A couple of critical elements are involved in this new effort.
First, it will be a working example of a new BMO approach in the that it calls “One Client.” This is designed to bring together leadership and operations that touch customers together in a 360-degree view. The idea is to grow relationships across traditional silos in ways that individual business lines can’t do on their own.
Second, the program is being redesigned such that it can be brought to a company’s human resources function specifically, from the company’s perspective, of being a service for its employees.
As part of this redesign, Slovenec says, BMO plans to offer tiered features. Right now, Bank at Work consists of a standard package offered to all companies willing to make it available to staff. Now, though details are still jelling, there will be more tailoring of approach to individual companies.
Tying commercial side relationships to employee-level offerings. One angle being considered is tiering what’s provided for a firm’s employees — such as a rewards program — on the basis of the size and scope of the corporate relationship with BMO.
“If it’s a really huge relationship for us, and there’s a very large employee base, it might be the company will get the top-level rewards for its employees,” says Slovenec. “If it’s a smaller organization, we still very much value their business. But based on the revenue, we might adjust what the employee banking program looks like.” As noted, this rebranding remains a work in progress that will in time be put before customer companies.
The idea is to give them additional benefits, “features they couldn’t just get out in the market just by walking into a branch,” says Slovenec.
Read next: How to Build Customer Relationships When Checking Accounts No Longer Confer Primacy
