BMO Financial and BNP Paribas enter a commercial agreement

They will also enter into a comprehensive leasing services partnership. As part of this collaboration agreement, both banks will continue to provide and expand on international services offered to clients.

The agreement follows BNP Paribas’s sale of Bank of the West to BMO which closed on 1 February 2023. This cross-border commercial agreement will ensure continuity of services for commercial banking clients and a focus on existing international commercial clients shared between BNP Paribas and Bank of the West. The agreement will also seek to boost future referrals for clients looking to access BNP’s extensive multi-country European and Asian presence and /or BMO’s deep, and now expanded network in the US and Canada.

The advantages of the partnership

BMO will retain the Bank of the West Multinational Client Platform team to deliver world-class service to new referrals and continuity for Bank of the West’s international clients.

BMO and BNP Paribas will also create a significant player in the equipment finance space through a trans-Atlantic partnership between BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions and the BMO Vendor Finance division. This collaboration will offer new and existing vendor partners access to end-to-end asset financing services including floorplan financing, point of sale and vendor leasing solutions.

BMO’s other partnerships

In December 2022, BMO partnered with FISPAN to enable BMO Online Banking for Business clients’ direct access to banking from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or accounting system. By integrating payments, reporting and reconciliation with these systems, clients are enabled to perform and manage their business transactions in a more simple and efficient way.

Earlier, in November 2022, BMO partnered with virtual card and spend management platform Extend to add a set of payments functionality to BMO Corporate Cards.Following the already existing Mastercard partnership, North America-based BMO Commercial Bank clients will be enabled to make use of Extend’s mobile and desktop app to create, send, and manage virtual cards for simplified payment and reconciliation processes.