The people at BMO Harris Private Banking say that what makes their operation stand out in the highly competitive Canadian private-banking space is that it provides clients with superior service through a number of specialists working together as a unit.

“It’s one team, and that team goes to market as an integrated business,” says Andrew Auerbach, senior vice president and chief operating officer of BMO Harris Private Banking in Toronto.

BMO Harris provides high net-worth (defined by the firm as $500,000-$10 million of investible assets) and ultra-high net-worth (more than $10 million) Canadians with banking, investment management, estate and trust, succession planning and philanthropic services and products.

At the private bank, a number of in-house specialists work together with a lead specialist to serve the client’s needs. If a client comes in requiring, say, primarily estate and trust planning, he or she will be served by an estate and planning specialist. That specialist then becomes the lead professional and will bring in specialists in other disciplines to serve the client as needed.

BMO Harris won’t reveal specific figures, but Auerbach says it is the third-largest private bank in Canada by assets, and it serves 14,000 client families. It has 24 offices across the country, divided into seven major markets. Each office reports to a market executive.

The Canadian private bank’s roots go back to 1999, when it was launched on the model of its sister company, Harris Private Bank in Chicago, which is more than a century old. The two private banks fall within Bank of Montreal’s private client group, which combines the bank’s wealth-management businesses.

Auerbach maintains that the fact that BMO Harris is part of a large bank is a positive, not a negative. A common concern of clients, of course, is that the bank’s bigness could create a “one size fits all” atmosphere. Instead, it allows BMO Harris to reach across the broader organization to provide clients with services and products that fall outside the private bank.

At the same time, Auerbach says, BMO Harris is a separate unit in the bank and can give high net-worth clients a boutique experience.

“I view this as really the best of both worlds,” he says. “We have a great entrepreneurial feel in our business, and yet we also benefit from being able to lever introductions to clients across a great bank.”

And the association with Harris Private Bank in the U.S. is an additional strength for the Canadian private bank. “It allows us to look after clients who are snowbirds or who own property in the U.S.,” Auerbach says. “There’s a lot of interaction between the two businesses.”

Auerbach acknowledges that the Canadian private-banking space is a highly competitive one, but adds that serving these clients is rewarding work.

“It’s a fantastic business,” he says.

— RUDY MEZZETA