BMO Helping Customers Stay Ahead of Managing Accounts with New "Same Day Grace" Feature

• 40 per cent of Canadians believe their bank can help prepare them for unexpected challenges
• BMO offers tips to help customers make progress in difficult times

TORONTO, July 27, 2022 /CNW/ - BMO Financial Group is helping Canadians protect their balances and stay ahead financially with Same Day Grace – the newly launched mobile and online banking feature that helps customers avoid the hassle of missing payments and incurring fees by notifying them when their everyday bank account balance dips below zero. BMO's new Same Day Grace provides customers a call-to-action to top up their account and return their balance to the positive by noon that day and avoid being charged a non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee.

"Life is busy, and when you're managing monthly bills and higher than normal everyday expenses, it can be hard to keep track of how much money is in your account," said Gayle Ramsay, Head of Everyday Banking and Customer Growth, BMO Bank of Montreal. "Our new Same Day Grace helps customers stay ahead of managing their money and is just one more way that we're helping our customers make real financial progress."

In a period of high inflation, rising interest rates and challenges with housing affordability, the BMO Real Financial Progress Index recently found that the top two factors for financial anxiety amongst Canadians are the fear of the unknown (47 per cent) and concerns about their overall financial situation (39 per cent). The BMO Real Financial Progress Index, which provides a quarterly measurement of consumer sentiment around financial confidence, also revealed that more Canadians now, compared to the previous quarter, believe that their bank can help prepare them for unexpected challenges (40 per cent). With new features like Same Day Grace, BMO is committed to protecting customers against setbacks in a tough economy and giving them peace of mind when managing their finances.

"While Canada's economy has shown resilience to earlier waves of the pandemic, resulting in the lowest unemployment rate in over half a century, Canadians are understandably worried about the outlook for their jobs and financial security given the challenging task that central banks have in controlling inflation without tipping the global economy into a temporary recession," said Sal Guatieri, Senior Economist, BMO.

BMO offers the following to help customers protect and manage their money in a tough economy:

• Use personal financial management tools like personalized BMO Insights to keep track of your recurring expenses and make it easier to track and manage your spending. Available through the BMO mobile banking app, BMO Insights uses artificial intelligence to provide automated, personalized, and contextual insights to customers based on their day-to-day banking behaviour, helping them better understand their spending habits and budget.
  
  With over 20 insights available, customers can track payment increases with a regular service provider, view a monthly overview of money coming in and out and identify potential cash shortfalls with the award-winning BMO CashTrack Insight.
  
  
  • BMO Insights generate up to 100,000 personalized insights every month, with over 58 million Insights delivered to customers as of March 2022.
    
    
• Choose banking options that best suit your personal needs like BMO's Family Bundle, which helps customers save money as a family by providing one household one monthly fee with all the benefits and privacy of separate chequing accounts. Since its launch in 2021, more than 40,000 families are banking together with Family Bundle.

For more information on how BMO's products and services can help consumers make real financial progress, visit www.bmo.com.

About the BMO Real Financial Progress Index

Launched in February 2021, the BMO Real Financial Progress Index is an indicator of how consumers feel about their personal finances and whether they are making financial progress. The Index aims to spark dialogue that will help consumers reach their financial goals and to humanize a topic that causes anxiety for many – money. The research detailed in this document was conducted by Ipsos in the United States and Canada from March 30 to April 25, 2022. A sample of n=3,403 Canadian adults ages 18+ were collected. Quotas and weighting were used to ensure the sample's composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. 

About BMO Financial Group

Serving customers for 200 years and counting, BMO is a highly diversified financial services provider - the 8th largest bank, by assets, in North America. With total assets of $1.04 trillion as of April 30, 2022, and a team of diverse and highly engaged employees, BMO provides a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, BMO Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets

Internet : www.bmo.com                                          
Twitter : @BMOMedia

SOURCE BMO Financial Group

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