When BMO Bank of Montreal crunched the numbers for its financial year-end recently, its commercial business in Surrey stood out.
Loans had grown more than 20%. That made the city one of the top areas in Canada for new business and total loans.
“For the Greater Vancouver district, we broke a record last year with over a billion dollars, and Surrey was a big part of that,” said Richard Dendy, BMO’s Cloverdale-based vice-president for commercial banking.
An estimated 1,200 people are moving into Surrey each month.
“And our bank, like most banks, has grown [its] branches just to keep pace with the growth,” Dendy said.
In an interview at BMO’s new branch on 152nd Street, kitty-corner from the recently upgraded Guildford Town Centre mall, Dendy sounded upbeat about further growth prospects.
“What we see in our pipeline is really encouraging,” he said.
BMO is noticing two trends in new business.
The first is succession financing, where either the employees of a business or family members of the owner are funding the owner’s retirement by buying into the business.
The second is Surrey’s growing Indo-Canadian business market, where entrepreneurs are focused on manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, construction and insurance. BMO is also seeing loan growth from animal clinics, food processors, truckers and auto repair shops.
“We identified Surrey as a strategic market that we want to focus on because of the rapid growth in the area,” Dendy said.
BMO, which has B.C.’s highest market share of commercial banks (27.8%) for loans of up to $5 million, is also going after professionals moving to Surrey.
“If you can merge professionals with a little bit of entrepreneurial savvy, those are the customers we really like,” Dendy said. “We find ways to help locate real estate, help finance that real estate and set them up with a line of credit. … That seems to be a winning formula.”
Anthony Okuchi, manager of operations, community business, at Vancity said Vancity is also seeing growth in Surrey. •
