BMO sets 20%-30% service target for Canadian card support

By Priya Raman

BMO set a 20% to 30% resolution-time reduction target for eligible credit-card inquiries at its Virtual Connect contact centre. The bank announced the internal AI Agent Assist tool on November 6, 2026, for employees serving Canadian clients, and targets automatic processing of about 40% of eligible refunds. Employees retain servicing decisions; software prepares cases rather than deciding outcomes.

Virtual Connect receives more than 500,000 such calls annually, each averaging 12 to 14 minutes to resolve. BMO's targets apply only to eligible interactions; for qualifying inquiries, clients could receive credit as soon as the same day, not under a universal turnaround commitment. BMO describes these figures as objectives, not reported contact-centre results.

What does the assistant change for employees?

AI Agent Assist pulls relevant transaction details and policy guidance to employees at the point of use. BMO says the consolidated workflow should reduce searches across separate systems, manual tasks and the need to place clients on hold while staff navigate those systems. The bank expects point-of-use information and guidance to help employees respond faster and apply service guidance consistently.

AI Agent Assist combines AI-enabled transaction matching, policy retrieval and case preparation for employee review. For eligible transactions, the assistant gathers information and prepares the case before a client-service employee makes the servicing decision.

Who remains accountable for client decisions?

The design follows a human-in-the-loop principle: client-service employees remain accountable for reviewing AI-generated information and making the servicing decision that affects the client. The technology handles information gathering and preparation, while people retain responsibility for the outcome. That arrangement keeps judgment and accountability with employees even as BMO targets automated handling of some eligible refunds.

For workforce leaders, two process measures follow. First, the assistant must reduce handling time on eligible inquiries against the current 12-to-14-minute baseline. Second, automation must scale without changing who reviews information and makes the client-impacting decision. BMO's targets therefore connect service speed, work design and individual accountability.

Can the capabilities scale beyond credit cards?

BMO is designing the capabilities behind AI Agent Assist for reuse across other client experiences and processes. Virtual Connect provides a high-volume setting for components the bank intends to carry into later agentic AI applications. That reuse turns the contact-centre deployment into a test of how operational gains, oversight and human accountability will hold when BMO applies the technology elsewhere.

Reuse also extends the control question. BMO's security, privacy and human-oversight approach is intended to extend beyond one credit-card workflow as the bank reuses its components. The announcement links operational adoption to those safeguards, making accountability part of the scaling requirement.

Greg Brown, BMO's chief digital officer for Personal and Business Banking Canada and head of enterprise AI transformation, called the effort “a broadening from individual use cases to AI at scale.” He said the approach needs “clear guardrails and people accountable for every decision.”

He linked that approach to security, privacy and human oversight as AI agents take a growing role in financial services. BMO said those protections shape how it builds its own capabilities and creates conditions for broader AI experiences.

What does BMO expect from the wider program?

The deployment supports BMO's enterprise goal of generating more than $1 billion in AI-enabled revenue growth, productivity improvements and operating efficiencies by 2030. The $1 billion figure covers the bank's broader AI ambition, not a value assigned to AI Agent Assist.

The next proof point is operational: whether AI-assisted preparation reduces eligible call times and automatically processes some refunds without shifting final servicing responsibility from employees to software. BMO's wider test follows: whether operational gains, oversight and human accountability remain together when the bank applies the capability to other processes.