News Releases
BMO Financial Group today announced that it has signed an agreement with Exult Canada, Inc., a subsidiary of Exult, Inc., a leading business outsourcing company, for the provision of comprehensive Human Resources processing services.
BMO’s decision to outsource its human resources processing functions followed an extensive due diligence review to ensure that the new arrangement would be cost effective and would enhance corporate performance and capabilities. The outsourcing agreement between BMO and Exult is valued at Cdn$75 million per year over a ten year period. The agreement will affect approximately 250 positions in Canada and the United States. The majority of the employees in these roles will be offered comparable positions within Exult, Inc. or in other BMO departments.
Leveraging its robust technology capabilities, Exult will assume responsibility for managing administrative HR services such as payroll and benefits administration, HR call centre management, employee records, and other technology-driven administrative functions.
“Our agreement with Exult will give us the freedom to focus on the strategic management of Human Resources while continuing to provide leading HR administrative services,“ said Rose M. Patten, Executive Vice-President, Human Resources and Head, Office of Strategic Management, BMO Financial Group. “This ensures that our people strategies continue to be strongly linked to business strategies.”
BMO Human Resources will retain internal responsibility for four strategic areas: talent management, performance alignment and compensation, equity and employee engagement, and learning and development. “Our HR professionals will focus on adding value to the execution of strategy by providing advice and counsel, oversight governance and development of policy,” said Patten.
Exult Founder, Chairman and CEO, Jim Madden said, “This agreement launches Exult’s expansion into the Canadian marketplace and deepens our market leadership and strength in the financial services industry. We are very pleased that BMO has selected Exult as its HR business associate. This arrangement is a further validation of the strength of our integrated offering, our experience with Global 500 companies, and the customer and quality focus of our people in this highly competitive environment.”
As part of the agreement, Exult will set up a new Client Service Centre in Canada to serve BMO’s Canadian employees. Much like it has done with its other centres, Exult plans to use this base to serve many other clients in what it anticipates will be a robust marketplace in Canada.
About BMO Financial Group:
BMO Financial Group (NYSE, TSX: BMO) – founded in 1817 as Bank of Montreal, Canada’s first bank – is a diversified financial services provider. With average assets of $259 billion as at January 31, 2003 and more than 34,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and solutions. BMO serves clients across Canada and in the United States through its Canadian retail arm BMO Bank of Montreal, Chicago-based Harris Bank, a major U.S. mid-west financial services organization which also has wealth management offices across the United States, and BMO Nesbitt Burns, one of Canada’s leading full-service investment firms.
About Exult:
Exult, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXLT) is the market leader in HR business process outsourcing for Global 500 corporations, with headquarters in Irvine, California, and client service centers in the U.S., Europe and India. Through its proprietary Exult Service Delivery ModelSM, Exult offers comprehensive, scalable process management solutions designed to manage clients’ entire human resource departments. Exult uses its HR process expertise, MultiDeliverySM shared client service centers, expert HR consulting capabilities and its myHRSM web-enabled applications to help Global 500 corporations enhance human capital productivity, reduce costs, streamline processes and provide superior HR services to their employees. For more information, visit www.exult.net.
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Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this release or the conference call referenced herein about the duration, revenues and scope of services of the contract between BMO and Exult, the use of assets acquired from BMO to serve other clients, and the benefits of Exult’s service offering to BMO and other outsourcing clients are forward-looking statements and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. Exult is still expanding, developing and enhancing its service capabilities and must transition client processes on schedule and transform these processes to a service delivery model that reduces the cost of delivering in-scope services while meeting contractual service level commitments. Exult must meet performance standards and the BMO contract permits reduction or early termination of the relationship under various circumstances. More information about Exult’s risks is available in Exult’s annual report on Form 10-K and other filings made from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Special attention is directed to the portions of those documents entitled “Risk Factors.”