BMO InvestorLine
By Silvio Stroescu, Head of Digital Investing, BMO Wealth Management
No one could have predicted the global challenges we’d be facing in 2020, but at BMO, we’ve been determined to meet those challenges head-on. COVID-19 has increased the demand for digital investing, acting as a tailwind for our investment platform BMO InvestorLine. We’ve seen an influx of younger investors entering the market directly under digital channels, hoping to find market opportunities that may arise.
Earlier in the year, like many other businesses, we had to rethink how we were operating. In order to keep our team members safe, many of our teams established remote-working models. Spikes in volumes to our call centres forced us to be flexible: To provide the most help to our clients, we redeployed team members to our call centres and shifted resources to support our back-office operations team.
As physical distancing changed how we interact with our clients, we knew it was important for our digital experiences to evolve as well. MyWealth, which launched earlier this year, in March, is InvestorLine’s new digital account opening application – it offers clients a full-serve and remote onboarding experience, complete with electronic signatures and real-time account openings. Thanks to MyWealth, we were able to handle a surge in new account applications (>100% YoY), and we enabled our clients to start trading without having to leave their homes.
Plus, we’re looking forward to the imminent launch of InvestorLine 2.0, available for both Self-Directed and adviceDirect clients. This is the largest update we’ve made to the InvestorLine platform in over a decade, and it includes a suite of upgrades for our clients: an updated design that is easier to use, greater access to meaningful investment data, customizable components to fit any investor’s needs and a streamlined trading experience. It’s part of a bigger push to know our clients: who they are, how they invest with us and what we can do to serve them better.
We’ve been incredibly proud of how quickly our team has been able to meet client demands, especially during the early peak of the pandemic. Thanks to our team’s responsiveness, we continue receiving top marks from third-party reviews of discount brokerage providers in Canada.
Looking ahead to 2021, we believe the demand for digital advice will continue to rise: Investors want to control their investment decisions, but they want help making those choices. Our adviceDirect platform is designed specifically to meet this need, as it combines InvestorLine’s ease-of-use with professional advice that’s tailored to each investor. For clients who might be on the fence about adviceDirect, we’ll be launching the Portfolio Health Check. This lightweight, zero-cost tool compares a client’s existing portfolio holdings against a self-identified investor profile. It can give clients a general overview on if their portfolio matches up with their chosen profile and suggest how adviceDirect could help them better achieve their goals.
We’re also excited to continue evolving InvestorLine 2.0. Soon, clients will be able to use the new experience to purchase mutual funds, HISAs and GICs; next year, options quotes and trading will make its way to the new platform. Continuing with digital advice, we’ll be creating a market data and research hub that is personalized to each client’s holdings and watchlist items. Enhanced transaction history and order history will be coming soon, too, giving clients the ability to filter their order history and quickly renew expired or filled orders.
When looking at upcoming trends and features that will interest DIY investors, personalization is key: It’s important to give clients an experience that meets their unique goals and investment strategies. Planning and ideation are also key, making sure investors know what actions to take toward their goals and empowering them to take those actions. To that end, InvestorLine 2.0 will introduce enhanced screener tools for equities, ETFs and mutual funds, while adviceDirect clients will be able to add personalized filters to refine buy recommendations based on more detailed criteria, including ESG scores and third-party ratings.