Multiple Compensation Cycles Streamlined
into One Enterprise-Wide Cycle for 47,000
Bank Employees
Company Profile
Established in 1817, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services
provider based in North America with operations globally in Asia, Europe, and the Middle
East. With total assets of $642 billion and 47,000 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.
Business Challenge
“We’re a global bank, so the number of regulators that we have and the requirements
that we have is fairly complex. Making sure that we have a tool that can streamline those
solutions for us is paramount to everything that we do,” said Margot Cresswell, program
delivery manager, Bank of Montreal.
In terms of complexity, BMO was running two compensation cycles per year and also had
two separate reward cycles for the executive and non-executive populations during the
company’s Fall cycle. BMO’s compensation plan set up included numerous custom field
criteria such as cost centers, job code combinations, specific employee identifier criteria,
as well as 17 different foreign exchange rates to manage.
To ensure 100 percent accuracy with incentive pay provisions, the compensation team
was faced with extensive manual workarounds. Additionally, over the past decade, the
sheer volume of bonus, stock and salary plans the company was managing had increased
due to overall business requirements. Compensation plan complexity, and the fact that
the compensation solution was being used for performance-related decisions as well
caused the bank to start looking for a better solution.
PeopleFluent Solution Results
BMO’s history of trust and results with PeopleFluent’s Compensation solution enabled
the company to scale. Leveraging PeopleFluent’s powerful capabilities BMO was able to
merge all the base pay and variable compensation cycles into one enterprise-wide cycle
for all 47,000 employees.
The PeopleFluent Compensation solution allows BMO to reduce manual workloads
and errors. They also utilize embedded analytics and features like deferral grids for their
discretionary compensation to facilitate deferral requirements across different levels
in the organization.
“Knowing that we have a solid tool behind us to be able to accommodate changes that
we know are going to come in the future is fantastic. It puts us at ease knowing that the
tool can grow with us,” said Cresswell.
PeopleFluent Compensation has also enabled BMO to mitigate risks and focus on
compensation strategy instead of details. BMO relies on PeopleFluent to make
calculations based on various components, review how different targets and measures
are overlaid, and provide the necessary audit and regulatory requirements needed.
Cresswell noted: “The use of the PeopleFluent Compensation tool in transforming how
we do what we do on the compensation side of the house is paramount. Looking at the
risk and complexity around our analytics and being able to simplify that is revolutionary.”
With PeopleFluent, BMO bank managers are now able to clearly understand how much
they have to allocate towards variable pay, have greater visibility at spends versus
allocations, and are better able to communicate to employees how their performance
and compensation tie together.
“The tool really allows us to walk through the compensation cycle in greater ease,
for instance, than if we were using spreadsheets for 47,000 employees. The time alone
that we save in using the PeopleFluent tool is phenomenal,” added Cresswell.
Most importantly, BMO has been able to give time back to its managers. By using the
simplified Compensation tool with data analytics and risk measures built in, managers
are confident that they are making the right decisions for employees. It has also allowed
them to spend more time with customers instead of focusing on back-end system
components.