TORONTO, March 28, 2024 /CNW/ - For the fourth
consecutive year, BMO has been recognized in the
2024 Report on Business, Women Lead Here list – an
annual benchmark recognizing Canadian businesses with the highest
achievement for executive gender diversity.
In line with its Purpose to Boldly Grow the Good in
business and life, BMO is committed to accelerating
initiatives that eliminate economic and societal barriers to
achieve meaningful and sustainable progress for underrepresented
communities, including women. The bank's commitment to
advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in its workforce has
yielded impactful results:
- Over 42 per cent of senior leadership roles are held by women;
globally, this number has remained above 40 per cent since
2016.
- Half of the independent directors on BMO's Board of Directors
are women.
The companies on the Women Lead Here list have made tangible and
organizational progress related to executive gender parity and are
chosen through a proprietary research methodology to determine
Canadian corporations with the highest degree of gender diversity
among executive ranks.
"Our work to eliminate barriers to inclusion is part of
everyone's responsibility at BMO – it's embedded in our culture and
founded on our values of diversity, integrity, empathy and
responsibility," said Darryl White,
CEO, BMO Financial Group. "Research has demonstrated that diverse
teams are stronger, higher-performing teams. It's critical that our
leadership teams represent the diversity of our workforce and the
communities we serve."
"We are honoured to be recognized for another year by Report on
Business' Women Lead Here," said Sharon
Haward-Laird, General Counsel and Executive Champion of
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, BMO. "Gender equity is a key
pillar of BMO's Zero Barriers to Inclusion strategy, which
is enabling us to drive progress for women and other equity
deserving groups – both inside and outside the bank."
"Recognizing the achievements of companies that effectively
address the challenges of executive gender parity represents a
pivotal stride forward," says Dawn
Calleja, the editor of Report on Business magazine.
"Although there's always more that can be done, the businesses
showcased here serve as catalyst for corporate Canada, inspiring them to progress toward
gender parity and, in turn, cultivate exceptional enterprises."
BMO is committed to promoting gender equity in the workplace and
beyond. Additional initiatives include:
- BMO made a commitment to increase the number of women-owned
businesses supported across our Canadian footprint. As of 2023, BMO
supported more than 146,000 women-owned businesses in Canada with more than $10 billion in loans.
- In 2023, BMO Alliance for Women, BMO's largest Employee
Resource Group with over 10,000 members, celebrated ten years of
championing the inclusion, connection, development, advancement and
support of women within BMO's workforce and culture.
- BMO has established customer programs, BMO for Women
(CAN) and Women in Business (US), which focus on
advancing gender parity for the bank's clients, supporting the
growth of women-owned businesses and empowering women to feel
confident about their finances and their financial futures.
- BMO has a partnership with 1871, which has led to the
development the WMN•FINtech program. Since its inception in
2018, over 15 percent of all women fintech founders in North
America have come through this initiative.
- In 2020, to support women entrepreneurs during the pandemic,
BMO for Women launched the Celebrating Women Grant Program. Over
the last three years, it has provided 56 business owners
across North America with over half a million dollars in
grant funding.
- In 2023, the Advocate Strategy began connecting women business
owners with region-specific Commercial and Business Bankers trained
and dedicated to supporting women clients.
- BMO recently partnered with the National Women's Soccer
League's (NWSL) Angel City Football Club (ACFC). As part of ACFC's
sponsorship model, the organizations reallocated 10 percent of the
partnership into the community through a sponsorship of Girls Play
Los Angeles (GPLA), where BMO is supporting over 400 high
school-aged girls and non-binary youth across Los Angeles with no-cost access to
soccer.
- BMO proudly supports the purse for The Carol Shields Prize
for Fiction. The Prize is the largest English-language literary
award in the world for women and non-binary writers, celebrating
creativity and excellence in fiction in Canada and the
United States while aiming to help address inequalities in
literary reviewing, reading and prize culture.
For the 2024 ranking, The Globe and Mail Report on Business
conducted a journalistic analysis of approximately 500 large
publicly traded Canadian companies based on revenue, evaluating the
ratio of female-identifying to male-identifying executives in the
top three tiers of executive leadership. The resultant data was
applied to a weighted formula that also factored in company
performance, diversity and year-to-year change.
The 2024 Women Lead Here list is in the April
2024 issue of Report on Business magazine, distributed with
The Globe and Mail on Thursday March 28, 2024, and online
at tgam.ca/WomenLeadHere.
About BMO Financial
Group
BMO Financial Group is the eighth largest bank in North America by assets, with total assets of
$1.3 trillion as of January 31, 2024. Serving customers for 200 years
and counting, BMO is a diverse team of highly engaged employees
providing a broad range of personal and commercial banking, wealth
management, global markets and investment banking products and
services to 13 million customers across Canada, the United
States, and in select markets globally. Driven by a single
purpose, to Boldly Grow the Good in business and life, BMO
is committed to driving positive change in the world, and making
progress for a thriving economy, sustainable future, and inclusive
society.
About The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is Canada's
foremost news media company, leading the national discussion and
causing policy change through brave and independent journalism
since 1844. With our award-winning coverage of business, politics
and national affairs, The Globe and Mail newspaper reaches 6.2
million readers every week in our print or digital formats, and
Report on Business magazine reaches 2.9 million readers in print
and digital every issue. Our investment in innovative data science
means that as the world continues to change, so does The Globe. The
Globe and Mail is owned by Woodbridge, the investment arm of the Thomson
family.
SOURCE BMO Financial Group