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Corporate Responsibility
  What's Inside
Customers

Protecting the Rights of Our Customers


Ensuring Accessibility

We are committed to ensuring that all our customers have access to our products and services. This begins with providing barrier-free access at our branches across the country. Today, 90% of our Canadian branches provide level or ramped entries to accommodate customers with disabilities. Many of our branches also offer wheelchair-height seating arrangements at service counters. As a result of a major upgrade of our ABM network across our 977 branches and off-site locations across Canada, our new ABM platform now offers improved accessibility. The ABMs’ height has been lowered and, where possible, they provide front accessibility for wheelchair users.

To assist customers with low vision, our ABMs also have screens with contrasting bright colours to make instructions easier to read, pulsing light bars that direct users to the card slot and envelope depository, and large-character keypads. In addition, BMO Bank of Montreal offers fully personalized large-print cheques with perforated guidelines as well as statements in braille.

Through BMO’s Employee Affinity group, Waves, for our deaf, deafened and hard of hearing colleagues, we receive counsel on best practices for serving members of their community. Thanks to their recommendations, our BMO Bank of Montreal Direct Banking Client Service Centre is equipped with a teletypewriter (TTY/TTD) which allows our clients who are deaf, deafened or hard of hearing to have all of their banking needs met through one single point of contact.

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"I'm very proud of BMO’s reputation as a highly trusted organization. A key part of maintaining that trust is our proven commitment to safeguarding the privacy of our customers and employees."
Johnna Koso
Chief Privacy Officer
BMO Financial Group
Safeguarding Privacy

Building a foundation of trust with our stakeholders requires that we respect and protect the privacy and confidentiality of the personal information of our customers and employees. BMO has a Chief Privacy Officer, whose mandate is the safeguarding of personal information and who is accountable for our privacy policy, complaint resolution, education and communication activities. The Chief Privacy Officer also manages the Privacy Office, a team of employees responsible and accountable for our organization’s compliance with privacy legislation. This team is also responsible for providing advice, expertise, education, support, and monitoring and reporting to executive management and the Board of Directors.

During 2007, BMO completed several key initiatives related to privacy. The Privacy Office, together with our Information Management and Information Security departments, implemented an enterprise-wide employee learning program to increase awareness of the proper handling of personal and confidential information. In addition, BMO collaborated with industry groups and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada to develop breach notification guidelines, and continued to provide input to the review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, designed for the protection of personal information in the private sector.

To help ensure that we respect and protect the personal information of our customers and employees and maintain the trust of all of our stakeholders, we monitor our practices for protecting personal information and make adjustments to existing controls as necessary. This is critical given the ever-changing technological and operational environment. While we strive to maintain effective controls to protect personal information, incidents may still occur. We maintain processes that help us quickly and appropriately respond to any privacy complaints or incidents to minimize the impact of these situations.

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"The role of the Ombudsman is to listen, record and meticulously review the facts of a complaint in an independent, objective and fair manner. Our independence enables us to address customer concerns in an unbiased and impartial manner. As an advocate of fairness, our goal is to do the right thing."
John Graham
Ombudsman
BMO Financial Group
Resolving Customer Complaints

Our complaint resolution process is part of our commitment to not only serving our customers responsibly but also acting as our customers’ advocate. Managing complaints effectively is essential to retaining our customers.

In 2007, we developed a single reference document for customers who want to resolve a complaint. The new brochure, called We Can Help – Resolving Customer Complaints, was designed to help BMO’s Canadian customers find the BMO team able to assist when a problem arises. It lists the complaint resolution process for all of BMO’s Canadian operating groups and includes contact information for BMO’s Ombudsman, the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, regulators and provincial securities commissions. It also lists the financial services industry’s Voluntary Commitments and Codes of Conduct that BMO agrees to follow. This brochure has been available in all BMO Bank of Montreal branches and online since May 2007.

If a dispute cannot be resolved satisfactorily either by branch staff or through internal executive levels, a customer may appeal to BMO Financial Group’s Office of the Ombudsman. As an advocate for fairness, the Ombudsman does not take sides and addresses problems or concerns in an unbiased and impartial manner. Every member of the Office of the Ombudsman is dedicated solely to resolving customer concerns and is not involved in BMO’s day-to-day operations. If a customer is not satisfied with BMO’s decision on a complaint, it is his or her right to contact the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments for an impartial and informal review. The Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments is not a regulator, and doesn’t advocate for consumers or the industry. Services from the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments are free to consumers.

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