1. SEP/OCT 2016 • monitor • 35
P
rior to 2011, BMO was not a significant participant in the
equipment finance industry, but by the end of 2015, the
bank had risen to No. 15 in the Monitor 100 ranking. A large
part of this sudden rise can be traced back to the bank’s desire to
enter the space, which was achieved through strategic acquisitions.
M&I Acquisition
BMO’s first move into equipment finance came with its acquisition of
Marshall & Ilsley (M&I) Bank in 2011. This step brought Jud Snyder,
president of M&I Equipment Finance, into the BMO family.
“The beautiful thing is that BMO really came in from the start,
knew it was a business they liked and they knew, if done right, the
equipment finance industry had low loss given default and was a
great compliment to existing bank relationships,” Snyder says. “It was
also a transactional product that we could use for new clients, so we
built up that strategy pretty quickly.” > >
Making Money Personal:
BMOFocusesonCustomerRelationships
BY RITA E. GARWOOD
In four short years, BMO Financial Group has risen up the ranks of the equipment finance
industry. While a large part of this ascent is due to the bank’s strategic acquisitions, there is
more to the story. Jud Snyder and Dan Clark, leaders of BMO’s Equipment Finance and
Transportation Finance businesses, respectively, also attribute this success to the company’s
culture, which puts the customer first.
JUD SNYDER
President, BMO Harris
Equipment Finance
DAN CLARK
Head, BMO
Transportation Finance
“We’ll celebrate our 200th anniversary as a bank next year in 2017. What
we’ve found is that when things do slow down a little bit, we tend to shine.
Our clients know that we’ve been there with them for a long time, and they
tend to come back to us because we’re a safe harbor and we’re one of the
banks they know are going to be there.”

2. 36 • monitor • SEP/OCT 2016
went into our next stage of leaving General Electric, it
was reassuring to see that. If you’re not satisfying your
customers and helping them grow, you’re going to be
stymied in a quagmire.”
Effectuating a Seamless Transition
BMO finalized its acquisition of GE Capital Trans-
portation Finance in December of 2015. But even with
a great match, transitions are never easy. Fortunately,
Clark already had experience leading two post-acquisi-
tion integrations during his career.
“The first thing you have to do is get your employees
engaged,” Clark says. “They need to start thinking BMO
and forgetting the past. They need to look forward and
adapt to BMO culture, terminology and — unfortu-
nately, in today’s world — acronyms. GE was big on
acronyms and I think BMO might be running up against
them for the win on that one,” he adds, with a laugh.
“You’ve just got to get that culture moving.”
Clark says another essential step in the process
is hiring an integration manager. “I really think that
having one person involved with focusing on the
details, heavily involved in the day to day and keeping
the process moving in all areas is just really impor-
tant because you’ve got to get in, and you’ve got to get
moving as quickly as possible.”
“Dan’s humble about this, but it’s also about leader-
ship,” Snyder says. “From the day we announced to the
day we closed and beyond, one of the things I’ve seen
Dan and his leadership team do is they make it personal.”
Snyder recalls attending a town hall meeting hosted
by Clark with a hundred employees in the room and
another few hundred on the phone. Clark told his
employees how good the BMO acquisition was going to
be and how confident he was in it. Snyder says Clark’s
leadership made his employees confident in the oppor-
tunities BMO was providing. “Beyond simply a strategy,
I think it was about a good leadership team that we
knew we had coming in from GE’s transportation busi-
ness,” Snyder says.
Looking Ahead
The short-term goal for the Transportation Finance unit
is a seamless completion of the integration. From there,
Clark has a rosy outlook for the future.
“GE was very good at some things, and BMO is very
good at some things, so what we’re able to do is truly
take the best of two good businesses. It allows us to be
a great business,” Clark says. “The biggest thing that we
can do long term is be much more to customers than just
lending for their equipment needs. We can now offer a
full line of banking products.”
Snyder says cross-selling is also important for the
Equipment Finance business. “We try to sell the whole
bank every day, so it’s not just about one relationship or
one transaction. It’s really trying to help people under-
stand that as one of the largest banks in North America,
BMO has strong capabilities in just about every space
that our clients need.”
Initially, Snyder and his team focused on three main
areas: mid-market to mid-corporate clients in BMO’s core
bank channels, building verticals in the large corporate
client space (primarily along large-ticket transportation
asset classes with a focus on marine, rail and corporate
air) and building a wholesale business.
“One of the benefits that BMO brought to the table was
that they were in a great position coming out of the reces-
sion,” Snyder says. “It was very well capitalized and was
growth oriented in the space, so with that strategy and that
strength behind us we grew quickly organically to just over
about $2 billion by 2014.”
At that point, BMO expanded the business to Canada.
“That initiative is not truly reflected in the numbers that
you’re seeing in the Monitor 100,” Snyder says. “But we
think that Canada might be one of the bigger growth
areas for us in our equipment finance practices in the
years to come.”
GE Transportation Finance Acquisition
BMO still saw room to grow. “We felt we still had the
opportunity to make a pretty big impact in the industry,
so we started to take a look at acquisitions,” Snyder says.
“When we evaluate potential acquisitions we look at
culture, client focus and risk. We just couldn’t see the
right fit for us until we started looking at some of the
opportunities with General Electric in the spring of 2015.”
Snyder says BMO’s executive team felt an instant
connection when they met GE’s Transportation Finance
team. “Dan’s team really shared a lot of the qualities that
we felt were important and helped us build our business,
and they had done it over a really long track record, so we
knew it would be a great fit for us.”
“When talking to Jud and Dave Casper, the conver-
sation was always centered around the customer and
what we could do to help the customer succeed,” says
Dan Clark, former president and general manager of GE
Capital Transportation Finance and current head of BMO
Transportation Finance. “It was the same building block
that my business had built on over the last 40 years. As we
“When talking to Jud and Dave Casper the conversation was
always centered around the customer and what we could do to
help the customer succeed. It was the same building block that
my business had built on over the last 40 years. As we went into
our next stage of leaving General Electric, it was reassuring to
see that. If you’re not satisfying your customers and helping them
grow, you’re going to be stymied in a quagmire.”
—Dan Clark, Head, BMO Transportation Finance

3. SEP/OCT 2016 • monitor • 37
soft, and I expect that to be about the same for the next
12 months. What you’ve seen in the last three or four
months is what you’re going to see probably through
mid-year next year before it starts having improvement
in the orders and deliveries.
“It’s not like it’s been in previous market downturns
because this one’s not driven by recession or some
other pre-buy,” Clark continues. “It’s a combination of
a slow economic growth and some political uncertainty.
People are taking money off the table and not doing
the purchases that they normally do, so we’re just in
that part of the cycle, which is not bad, it’s just one of
those fair-to-good type ranges that we’ll have to work
our way through.”
Despite the slow growth of both the equipment and
transportation finance industries, Snyder and Clark see
opportunities ahead.
“We’ll celebrate our 200th anniversary as a bank
next year in 2017,” Snyder says. “What we’ve found
is that when things do slow down a little bit, we tend
to shine. Our clients know that we’ve been there with
them for a long time, and they tend to come back to us
because we’re a safe harbor and we’re one of the banks
they know are going to be there.”
“From the highest levels of the business in Toronto,
the idea of growing this segment of the bank is a focal
point,” Clark says. “I see that as a newcomer coming in,
and it hasn’t diminished at all over the last nine months.”
“We’re excited about the opportunity to continue to
grow,” Snyder says. “We think the industry is a strong
one. We think it’s the engine behind a lot of the growth
in the U.S. when you support clients with the capital
expenditures they need to run their business. We look
forward to continuing to invest in that. Honestly, with
the addition of Dan’s team, we feel like we’ve got a really
bright spot for the future.” m
RITA E. GARWOOD is managing editor of Monitor and
ABF Journal.
Expansion is also on Snyder’s agenda. “We have a
goal to continue to grow, especially on a North American
basis. We’re one of the few banks that can really deliver
on a North/South partnership for our clients. We really try
to make it more than just a transaction, and I think that
ties into BMO’s overall vision. We believe within finan-
cial services there is an opportunity to deliver more on the
human side of banking, that money is personal. Even in a
business context, if you’re delivering things with a focus on
a human aspect, your clients are going to understand that,
they’re going to feel that and they’re going to be more loyal
to us. That’s a real focus for all of our businesses.”
Part of providing this personal touch includes having
the ability to work across all asset classes for clients.
According to Snyder, his business will finance just about
every asset class other than commercial trucks and trailers.
“We do still finance a small portion of trucks, but we
know that Dan and his team are really the experts in that
area,” Snyder says. “Our bank has sector expertise in food
and consumer, engineering and construction, energy and
financial institutions, and we’ve got a great geographic
cross section across the U.S., so that gives us the capability
to work across virtually all asset classes for our clients.”
On the transportation side, Clark says his team focuses
primarily on heavy-duty trucks and trailers, has a signifi-
cant medium-duty segment and has been expanding its
business in the refuse space.
“Our model is relationships and collateral expertise,”
Clark says. “Our customer base is such that relationship
means a lot, and that’s what we have. We have 120 sales
people across the U.S. and almost 20 across Canada —
that local presence gives us that ability to have that rela-
tionship and be able to be everything to the customer.
Now we have the ability to bring ABL products, treasury,
commercial real estate and all the banking products that
we never had before. Now we can put a bow right on the
package for our customers.”
Industry Outlook
When looking at the equipment finance industry as
a whole, Snyder expects the current slow growth condi-
tions to continue. “We haven’t seen core manufacturing
come back in any material way for a number of years,”
Snyder says. “We see maintenance and replacement
CAPEX that are continuing to drive volume, but we’ve
seen a real reluctance to invest, and we’d attribute that
probably to some political uncertainty as well as some of
the fluctuation in commodities and energy prices over the
last 12 to 18 months.
“What we’re seeing is that things are a little bit softer,
still not bad, but you still have 2% to 4% GDP growth, and
this is about what you get,” Snyder continues. “You get a
relatively soft capital expenditure marketplace right now.
We don’t see that changing much for the rest of 2016 or
early 2017. I think we’re going to continue to see this ‘write
and replace’ sort of strategy.”
As for transportation finance, Clark expects the current
softness to continue. “We’re coming off of a high market
over 2014 and 2015,” Clark says. “The first half of 2016 was
“We really try to make it more than just a transaction, and
I think that ties into BMO’s overall vision. We believe within
financial services there is an opportunity to deliver more on the
human side of banking, that money is personal. Even in a business
context, if you’re delivering things with a focus on a human
aspect, your clients are going to understand that, they’re going
to feel that and they’re going to be more loyal to us. That’s a real
focus for all of our businesses.”
— Jud Snyder, President, BMO Harris Equipment Finance