Newsmaker: BMO executive looks for opportunities

Barker-Merz came into the financial services business by chance; she hadn’t even considered a job in this sector. “I was a social science major,” she says, “and I was thinking of going the marketing/advertising route.”

Instead, while working for her university’s student government, Barker-Merz met a community banking manager at a local event. That manager suggested Barker-Merz consider the financial services sector and ended up recruiting Barker-Merz for BMO. The manager also challenged Barker-Merz to see how fast she could move from teller to qualified lender. (It took her only nine months.)

Since then, Barker-Merz’s career path has taken her from Ottawa to Toronto, from working on the ground floor of mbanx (BMO’s first foray into virtual banking) to personal and commercial banking, then to insurance as chief operating officer and, finally, to the discount brokerage arm.

“I never had that five- or 10-year path,” she says. “I always kept [my mind] completely open so that I didn’t miss out on opportunities.”

Having an understanding and connection to many areas of the bank means that Barker-Merz is looking for opportunities for BMO and its clients rather than simply for the discount brokerage.”I really come in with my BMO hat on when I make decisions,” she says. “I don’t think, ‘InvestorLine’; I think, ‘BMO’.”

That collaboration mindset extends to how BMO InvestorLine can work with the parent bank’s other lines of business, such as BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. Although Barker-Merz acknowledges that competition has been a concern between BMO’s two brokerage units, she believes they can complement one another: “I don’t want [Nesbitt’s] clients. I want to give their clients a new tool.”

Barker-Merz is focused on building BMO InvestorLine’s content and accessibility. For example, this past year, the discount brokerage launched a mobile app, and soon will launch an app for tablets. The discount brokerage also is looking into creating an online social network for its investors, similar to a platform released by competitor RBC Direct Investing in 2013. “Social networks are growing at such a rapid pace, we need to get in the game,” Barker-Merz says. “There’s a real big opportunity there.”

BMO InvestorLine also made some changes to its adviceDirect platform in October. Not only has the minimum asset requirement been lowered to $50,000 from $100,000, but the fee on accounts of $100,000 or more was reduced to 0.75% from 1%. A cap of $3,750 a year also was introduced for accounts of $500,000 or more.

Much like a traditional discount brokerage, adviceDirect gives clients the freedom to make their own investment decisions; however, adviceDirect uses a computer algorithm that makes investment recommendations based upon the client’s profile. Clients also can contact registered financial advisors with questions.

Due to the technological aspect of adviceDirect, the platform sometimes is thought of as a “robo-advisor”; just don’t say that term to Barker-Merz. “With the rise of ‘robo-advisors,’ we are in the process of trying to better articulate [adviceDirect’s differences],” she says. For example, she argues, while robo-advisors typically offer only exchange-traded funds in managed solutions, adviceDirect allows clients to choose from a wider array of investments, including equities and fixed-income.

Besides overseeing BMO InvestorLine and its adviceDirect platform, Barker-Merz is heading up BMO’s women in wealth (WIW) committee, an initiative launched this past year to bring more women into BMO both as employees and clients.

“Hopefully, in less than a few years, we will really make a mark,” Barker-Merz says. “And if you were to ask any woman on the street [which] is the bank for women, they would point to BMO.”

As part of this new initiative, Barker-Merz meets monthly with individuals from across BMO to discuss how they can make the firm and financial services, in general, more appealing to women. “There’s no silver bullet,” Barker-Merz says, “we’ve all been trying to do it for years.”

In fact, Barker-Merz recalls recently coming across a binder for a women’s conference from 1997 in which the notes and agenda are virtually identical to the issues that she and her colleagues are working through today.

As this is the first year of the WIW initiative, many items still are in the research or pilot phases. For example, BMO is hosting a pilot series of seminars for advisors this month in Vancouver, Toronto, Waterloo, Ont., and Halifax. These seminars will focus on how advisors can best work with female clients.

A few things have begun to take shape. In September, Nesbitt hosted its first national conference for female advisors. As well, the brokerage launched a website in July that’s designed to encourage women to become financial advisors – an initiative that is overseen by another member of the WIW committee, Charyl Galpin, co-head of Nesbitt.

“[It’s] incredible and a little depressing how much excitement came out of that,” says Barker-Merz. “It’s just a website, but it hit such an important need for women in this industry.”

In addition to the WIW initiative, Barker-Merz also likes to mentor women starting out in the financial services sector or simply offer some advice over coffee. “I take every opportunity to have conversations with women,” she says, “and to be very bold, even with women I don’t know, to suggest they take more chances.”

When not spending time with future up-and-comers in the financial services world, Barker-Merz spends time with her eight- and nine-year-old daughters and her husband.

When Barker-Merz has time for herself, she enjoys running; she completed her first marathon in 2012 – an accomplishment that turned out to be a challenge for more reasons than one: originally, Barker-Merz intended to run the race with friends in New York; however, the city’s annual marathon was cancelled that year because of hurricane Sandy; not to be deterred, Barker-Merz and her friends discovered that Hamilton, Ont., was hosting a marathon and had opened spots for would-be New York marathoners.

For Barker-Merz, a resident of Oakville, Ont., the decision was a “no-brainer” and, two-days later, she ran across the finish line. Says Barker-Merz: “Hamilton will always hold a dear place in my heart for having opened that [marathon] up for us.”

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