BMO Modernized U.S. Digital Banking

BMO is the seventh-largest bank in North America by assets and known for delivering cutting-edge digital banking experiences to its 13 million customers. With a strategic commitment to being digital first, it focuses on creating high-performing, digitally enabled, future-ready platforms. That strategy was put to the test in 2023, when BMO acquired Bank of the West — a regional U.S. lender with 1.8 million customers and more than 500 branches — and needed to integrate those customers into the BMO Digital Banking app. To support this complex migration, BMO turned to Akamai, its long-standing technology partner, for industry-leading security, performance, and availability.

BMO’s mission was clear: Deliver a smooth, secure digital transition that kept customers connected and confident throughout the process. “The acquisition was about growing the good for our customers,” said Kaustubh Krishna Srivastava, Head of U.S. Digital & Business Banking Technology for BMO. “It was a very complex acquisition and integration because all Bank of the West systems were migrating to BMO systems. Our team was tasked with making this migration as seamless as possible for customers.”

That seamlessness hinged on security and stability. “We knew the conversion announcement would be big,” said Brianna Elsass, Head of U.S. Digital Servicing and Technology at BMO. “It was important to take extra steps to maximize the security of our customers and their data throughout the migration.”

“We looked to mitigate some of the risk by leveraging proven technology partnerships,” added Srivastava.

As BMO considered the right technology vendor for this digital transformation project, its longtime partner Akamai came to mind. After a rigorous vendor selection process, BMO decided to continue their partnership with Akamai. “We evaluated parameters like architecture, future readiness, flexibility, risk, and security,” said Srivastava. “Akamai checked all the boxes.”

While BMO worked on smoothly migrating customers from Bank of the West, security and availability remained top priorities. “We offloaded some of our security and availability concerns to Akamai,” he continued. “Akamai Bot Manager, Account Protector, and App & API Protector protected the bank and our customers during this huge migration.”

One of BMO’s primary goals was to make the transition feel invisible to Bank of the West customers. “We wanted customers to log in the same way they always had and instantly feel like the new app was built for them,” said Elsass. BMO’s team ensured credentials, profiles, and preferences transferred smoothly, while also introducing new features that aligned with its award-winning Digital Banking app experience.

BMO also made it easy for customers to navigate new capabilities. “We added features and optimized journeys to meet the day-to-day banking needs of Bank of the West customers,” continued Elsass. “We wanted the experience to feel familiar but upgraded.”

In the United States, about 1.5 million customers use BMO’s Digital Banking platform, with about half a million logging in daily. The app processes roughly 33 million API requests per day.

Akamai’s contributions went far beyond security. Akamai’s global edge infrastructure, routing logic, and caching mechanisms offloaded BMO’s servers and delivered app content quickly and securely. “Akamai is a preferred partner from an availability point of view,” Srivastava said.

BMO and Akamai’s engineers collaborated closely to design a best-in-class offloading and failover system. “We built robust health checks and network components that detect and react to failures instantly. Customers don’t even realize a failover is happening — it’s invisible to them,” he explained.

Like all modern banking apps, BMO’s digital platform faced evolving technical challenges. One issue was the increasing size of cookie headers, which created performance bottlenecks. “As part of our journey to cloud, header size limitations were impacting app performance,” explained Srivastava. “Akamai helped us strip cookies at the parameter level and resolved the issue in under a week. It’s now helping us with systematic cookie allowlisting to prevent future issues.”

In another case, BMO needed to redirect app traffic between two regions without disrupting the user experience. Akamai’s Edge Redirector Cloudlet made this easy. “We flipped traffic within minutes, ensuring continuity without customer disruption,” said Srivastava.

BMO’s innovative approach hasn’t gone unnoticed. BMO’s Digital Banking app consistently ranks among the top seven digital banking apps globally. In 2024, Celent named BMO its Model Bank for Integration Excellence, recognizing the bank’s accelerated conversion and best practices in onboarding. In 2025, BMO earned an Editor’s Choice Award from Banking Tech Awards for the same project, highlighting the exemplary experience delivered to customers.

Looking ahead, BMO plans to move its Digital Banking app infrastructure to the cloud. “Akamai provides a great solution to host our front-end components,” said Srivastava. “We see Akamai as a critical partner in our multiyear cloud journey.”