Growing the good in business and in life: BMO’s triple bottom line

Transcript

“We know that if we treat our clients well, they’ll in turn trust us and treat us well,” says Dev Srinivasan, Chief Operating Officer for BMO Bank of Montreal Canadian Business Banking: “It’s not a short-term game, this is truly a long-term game.” In the last of our three videos with Dev, he discusses BMO’s mission, and vision for its business brand.

Dev Srinivasan: BMO’s purpose is to grow the good in business and in life. And when you think about that small amount of words there, and how much is embedded in those words, it really excites me.

BMO wants to ensure that it’s doing good by its employees, good by the community, and also wants to succeed in the marketplace. So it’s really all-encompassing, and you can get all of those three things aligned. Banking can often be solely about profits with a number of other institutions; BMO really take care to align those three objectives.

BMO’s culture really has a huge impact on how we work with our clients. We’re very collaborative, and we’re focused in on the client first. We know that if we treat our clients well, they’ll in turn trust us and treat us well. And that really is the key. It’s not a short-term game, this is truly a long-term game. We’re great in good times; we’re even better when challenging times arise.

One of the most important tools that BMO has in terms of ensuring that we truly are growing the good in business and in life is, we have a client advisory council where we take 20 of our top clients from across the country, and we bring them together every six months. And we really look to them to be the voice of the business community: in terms of what’s needed, where are the shortcomings, where are we falling short, where is the industry falling short? And we work really aggressively with the ideas we get from that council to really look to improve and continually move the bank forward.

The vision for BMO Business Banking is to be recognised as a leader globally in commercial banking. We’re doing this in a couple of ways. It’s important for us of course financially to be recognised this way, but we also want to be recognised in the way that we’re achieving that financial success. And again, that comes back to our purpose, which is all about ensuring that we’re giving back to our communities, giving back to our employees, giving back to our clients as well. And if you do all of those things in the right way, you will achieve that leadership.