News Releases

Second-Fastest-Growing Company in Industry to Add $26 Billion in Assets

INDIANAPOLIS, IN and CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - June 26, 2015) - OneAmerica and BMO Financial Group (TSX: BMO) (NYSE: BMO) announced today that they have reached an agreement for OneAmerica to acquire BMO's Milwaukee-based, U.S. retirement services business, BMO Retirement Services, a division of BMO Global Asset Management. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

"Adding BMO's retirement services business enhances our already strong position as a leader in the retirement services industry and complements our high-touch, relationship-based service model," said OneAmerica President and CEO Scott Davison, who took the helm as CEO last year. "With this acquisition, we'll increase our assets under administration by approximately $26 billion. This brings our total to more than $70 billion -- double our total less than two years ago."

The transaction is expected to close during the third quarter of calendar year 2015. At that time, the business will adopt the name OneAmerica Retirement Services LLC. OneAmerica has announced that it will continue business operations from BMO Retirement Services' current locations, and most clients will continue to work with their current service teams. BMO Retirement Services employees covered by the agreement will become OneAmerica employees.

"The addition of this business expands our award-winning service platform, enriches our professional services individually directed account (IDA) capability and gives us additional sales expertise and geographic reach," said Bill Yoerger, president of the retirement services division for OneAmerica. "We're committed to growing our retirement business, and this acquisition helps us meet that goal."

BMO's U.S. retirement services business has more than 200 professionals with approximately 830 plans. The retirement services businesses of OneAmerica serve more than 11,000 plans and have more than $30 billion in retirement assets under administration.

"BMO is committed to delivering value to our clients, and we're very pleased that we found a buyer such as OneAmerica that combines our focus on relationships and high-touch service values," said Barry McInerney, Co-CEO, BMO Global Asset Management. "BMO believes that OneAmerica will be an excellent cultural and service-model fit for our employees and clients."

McInerney noted that BMO's decision to sell its U.S. retirement services business is consistent with BMO Global Asset Management's strategy to focus on its award-winning asset management business.

"The transaction will not change BMO's role in managing a portion of the investments in the plans moving over to OneAmerica as well as acting as the directed trustee and custodian for those plans," said McInerney.

A year ago, OneAmerica announced an agreement to acquire City National Bank's San Diego-based retirement services business, with 240 plans and $6.5 billion in assets under administration.

About OneAmerica^®
OneAmerica Financial Partners, Inc., headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind., has companies that can trace their solid foundations back more than 135 years in the financial services marketplace.

The OneAmerica companies offer a variety of products and services to serve the financial needs of their policyholders and customers. These products include retirement plan products and trust and record-keeping services; individual life insurance, annuities, asset based long-term care solutions and employee benefit plan products.

The products of the OneAmerica companies are distributed through a nationwide network of employees, agents, brokers and other distribution sources that are committed to increasing value to policyholders by helping them prepare to meet their financial goals. To learn more about our products, services and the companies of OneAmerica, visit www.OneAmerica.com/companies, the OneAmerica Newsroom or follow @OneAmerica on Twitter.

About BMO Financial Group

Established in 1817, BMO Financial Group is a highly diversified financial services provider based in North America. With total assets of approximately $633 billion as of April 30, 2015, and more than 47,000 employees, BMO provides a broad range of retail banking, wealth management and investment banking products and services to more than 12 million customers and conducts business through three operating groups: Personal and Commercial Banking, Wealth Management and BMO Capital Markets.

Cautionary statement regarding forward-looking information

Bank of Montreal's public communications often include written or oral forward-looking statements. Statements of this type are included in this press release, and may be included in other filings with Canadian securities regulators or the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or in other communications. All such statements are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under, the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and any applicable Canadian securities legislation. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to the expected closing of the proposed transaction and plans for the acquired business and are typically identified by words such as "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "plan", "will", "should", "may", "could" and other similar expressions.

By their nature, forward-looking statements require BMO to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. There is significant risk that predictions, conclusions or projections will not prove to be accurate, that our assumptions may not be correct and that actual results may differ materially from such predictions, conclusions or projections. We caution readers of this press release not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements as the assumptions underlying such statements may not turn out to be correct and a number of factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the targets, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed in the forward-looking statements. The future outcomes that relate to forward-looking statements may be influenced by many factors, including but not limited to: the possibility that the proposed transaction does not close when expected or at all because required regulatory or other approvals and other conditions to closing are not received or satisfied on a timely basis or at all; the terms of the proposed transaction may need to be modified to satisfy such approvals or conditions; the anticipated benefits from the proposed transaction are not realized in the time frame anticipated or at all as a result of changes in general economic and market conditions, interest and exchange rates, monetary policy, laws and regulations and their enforcement; and reputational risks and the reaction of BMO's U.S. retirement services business clients to the transaction.

We caution that the foregoing list is not exhaustive of all possible factors. Other factors and risks could adversely affect expected outcomes. For more information, please see the factors set out on page 29 of BMO's 2014 Annual Report.

BMO does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement, whether written or oral, that may be made, from time to time, by the organization or on its behalf, except as required by law.