BMO
Financial Services · bmo.com
14 out of 20 Trust-aware
The shortest and plainest privacy writing of any Canadian bank, in three pieces, behind a country picker.
How many clicks to find the privacy policy from the homepage?
Two clicks, and a country picker in between. The footer link “Privacy” lands on a global BMO Privacy Code page listing Canada, the US, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Japan. You have to know which jurisdiction you are in before you can read your own policy. The Canadian code is the second click.
Is there a meaningful choice about cookies and tracking before data is collected?
Declining is a text link and three toggles. “ACCEPT AND CONTINUE” is a solid blue button. “Manage your preferences” beside it is not a button at all, it is plain text. Behind it there is no Reject All, and Functional, Performance and Targeting all arrive switched on, so refusing means flipping three switches by hand and confirming.
How hard is the policy to read, how much of it is there, and can you get it in one piece?
Grade 12.6 across 5,465 words, in three places. Difficulty 1, length 2, access 2. The plainest prose and the shortest documentation of the five banks, which is worth saying plainly. Access is what costs it: the Privacy Code and the Digital Privacy Policy are separate, and the defined terms the Code leans on — “Personal Information”, “BMO Financial Group”, “Direct Marketing” — link out to a third page, so the definitions are not in the document that uses them. Measure it yourself.
How many clicks to reach data settings, and can you delete your account yourself?
Correct it yourself, ask for it in writing. The Code states that you can access some of your information “by signing into digital banking” and that “you can also correct your Personal Information via digital banking”, which is a documented self-serve route and the clearest of the five. The formal access, correction and Quebec portability request still runs through “the branch or office where you do business”, possibly in writing, possibly for a fee. Login-gated with no guest route caps this at 3.
Find the support page. How many clicks, and is there a way to speak to a human?
A human in one click, no login. “Contact Us” from the homepage, and 1-877-225-5266 is listed on the page. BMO leads with an online support tool, but the number is beside it rather than behind it.
Overall finding
14 out of 20 Trust-aware
BMO writes the clearest privacy prose of any Canadian bank measured and then files it in three places, which is the whole bank in one sentence. Every dimension here is a near miss: the policy is plain but scattered, the choice is real but arrives pre-agreed as a text link, the correction route is genuinely self-serve but the request behind it is not. Nothing about BMO is hostile. Very little of it is finished.
- Scored
- 7 August 2026
- Region
- Canadian site, private window
- Session
- Logged out
Scored from public evidence only. No company can pay to change a score, and paid relationships are disclosed here. Read the independence statement.