BMO to boost California branch count by 50% over five years

• Key insight: BMO unveiled details about its West Coast branch expansion plan, which includes 130 new branches in California over the next five years.
• What’s at stake: The Toronto-based bank is targeting markets with higher growth prospects in an effort to boost its returns.
• Supporting data: BMO’s expansion plans will increase its branch footprint in California by more than 50% over the next five years, bringing the number of offices in the state to around 350.

BMO Financial Group, which has zeroed in on California as a key growth market after  acquiring Bank of the West three years ago, is planning a major branch expansion in the Golden State over the next five years.

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The Canadian bank said Tuesday that it will open more than 130 branches in California between now and 2031, including seven that are slated to open this year. The announcement came five months after the BMO said it would reconfigure its U.S. branch network to be more “California-centric.” 

The new offices will boost BMO’s California branch footprint by more than 50%, according to the bank, raising the total from about 220 offices today to around 350 within the next half-decade.

“These financial centers provide our clients more opportunity to meet face to face with our teams to discuss their goals for their business and personal financial lives, build trusted relationships, and receive personalized guidance that helps them make real financial progress,” Aron Levine, who was hired as BMO’s U.S. president in June 2025, said in a press release.

BMO’s branch expansion will put it more in line with some other large banks doing business in the state. Citi, for example, has 273 branches there, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

JPMorganChase has the most branches in California, with 871 offices, followed by Wells Fargo with 788, Bank of America with 697 and U.S. Bancorp with 565, FDIC data shows. 

BMO, whose stateside business has historically been focused on the Midwest, has been shifting its gaze west for the past several years as it looks for faster-growing markets. In 2021, the bank said it would buy San Francisco-based Bank of the West from BNP Paribas.

The deal, which closed in 2023, offered contiguous market expansion and a way to accelerate growth in commercial banking, as well as scaled entry into what BMO described at the time as the “highly attractive” California market.

But the Bank of the West purchase came with some unexpected challenges, particularly in commercial lending. BMO, which has total assets of 1.45 trillion Canadian dollars, didn’t capture revenue synergies from the acquisition as quickly as first anticipated. At the same time, ongoing muted loan demand in the U.S. was a factor in the bank’s underperformance. 

In an effort to drive higher returns, BMO sold certain nonrelationship loan portfolios and began rethinking its branch network to focus on markets with higher growth prospects. It has set a goal to achieve a 12% return on assets for its U.S. business. For the three-month period that ended on Jan. 31, the bank’s U.S. return on assets was 7.9%, up from 6.5% in the year-ago period.

During the company’s quarterly earnings call in February, BMO CEO Darryl White said the bank was “nearly done” optimizing its U.S. balance sheet and predicted positive commercial loan growth in the second half of the year. 

“It’s all coming together,” added Levine, who joined BMO from Bank of America.”We’ve got work to do, but we feel confident about where the momentum is pointing to over the next couple of quarters.”

The new California branches should allow BMO to achieve greater density in the nation’s most populous state. The branches will be designed as “modern financial advice hubs” that offer expertise in personal and business banking, commercial banking and wealth management, BMO said. 

Three branches will open this year in the greater Los Angeles region, while two branches are scheduled to open in the Bay Area, and another two will open in San Diego, the bank said.

Also over the next five years, BMO expects to open roughly 15 new branches in Arizona, according to the press release, which pointed specifically to the Phoenix and Tucson markets. The bank did not provide any additional details about the timing of the expansions in Arizona and California.

A BMO spokesperson did not respond Tuesday to a question about how much the branch expansion plan will cost.

At the same time BMO is opening new locations, it’s in the midst of selling 138 branches, or about 13.7% of its total U.S. footprint, to First Citizens BancShares in Raleigh, North Carolina. Those branches are mostly located in the Midwest and the Great Plains.

When the branch sale, which requires regulatory approval, was announced in October, it was expected to close by mid-2026. But the anticipated timeline has been pushed out to the second half of this year, Craig Nix, First Citizens’ chief financial officer, told analysts in January.

The deal will increase First Citizens’ deposits by about $5.7 billion and its loans by about $1 billion, Nix said. 

BMO is planning to host an investor day in Toronto on March 26. The agenda includes a strategic overview by White and a session on U.S. banking by Levine.