BMO Review: Checking, Savings and CDs

BMO's Premier Money Market account has a rate of 1.00% APY. (This account did not factor into the bank’s overall star rating; the savings account, which has no monthly fee and no minimum balance requirement, was considered instead.) The monthly fee is $10 but is waived if your daily balance is at least $5,000.

BMO's Savings Builder account has a low rate: 0.01% APY. To compare, the national average savings rate is 0.42% APY. There’s no monthly fee, and you can open an account with $25. We considered this account in the bank’s overall score because it’s the account that’s most widely available.

Alternately, BMO Financial Group (which BMO is part of) also offers BMO Alto, which is online-only and features a savings account that pays a high rate in all states. (Read our review of BMO Alto.)

BMO's regular certificates of deposit range in term from three months to five years and require $1,000 to open. The rates tend to be better than those you'd find at brick-and-mortar banks, but you can still find better rates elsewhere, especially if you consider CDs at online banks. BMO does offer CD specials; they tend to have better rates than the bank's standard CDs, but are offered for different term lengths.

BMO has multiple support channels, including live phone support with extended hours on weekdays and weekends, and over 500 branches in the U.S., mostly in the Midwest but with locations in Arizona and Florida, too. For the more tech-savvy, there are online savings tools as well as highly rated mobile apps.

The bank doesn’t charge an overdraft fee if your account is overdrawn by $50 or less. But if you overdraw your account by more than $50, BMO charges a $15 overdraft fee per transaction, up to three times a day.

To avoid overdrafts, free overdraft protection transfers are available from a linked checking, savings or money market account or an overdraft line of credit, which has an annual percentage rate (APR) of 18%.