Providing their customers with highly diversified financial services since 1817, Bank of Montreal, or BMO Financial Group, steadily continues to grow and is becoming a well-known bank in North America. Total assets for the bank grew to an astonishing $413 billion in April 2011 and that is with the help of their 45,000 highly trained employees.

BMO’s catch phrase is to help their customers make money make sense with their broad range of services that include retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and solutions. They have a large customer base that extends to Canada with BMO Bank of Montreal® and BMO Nesbitt Burns®. BMO Capital Markets™ is the North American investment and corporate banking division. Also, BMO Harris Bank is a North American based financial institution and provides personal and commercial banking.

BMO completed the acquisition of Milwaukee-based Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (M&I) on July 5, 2011. The name change process is being completed over the next eighteen months.

Review: Bank of Montreal Services

This quick overview will be over the recognizable Harris Bank that is located in the United States.

Harris Bank does not offer a huge selection of checking accounts but sometimes that is a very good quality to have. They offer checking accounts for the typical spenders and more advanced checking accounts for those who are looking to gain off their money. Harris Select CheckingSM is an interest bearing account and gives exclusive access to Harris Lifestyle BenefitsSM. The minimum to open this account is $100 and to avoid the $15 monthly maintenance fee the average daily balance must be $2,500 or greater. Another way to avoid this fee is to obtain a relationship waiver, which is basically linking your checking accounts with additional, approved accounts such as the Harris Everyday CheckingSM account.