BMO Harris hires new Indiana commercial banking executive

BMO Harris Bank has hired an executive to lead its effort to expand its commercial banking presence in central Indiana and around the state.

Tim Oliver, 49, has joined BMO Harris as the bank’s commercial banking market executive for Indiana. Oliver’s territory focuses on central Indiana but covers the entire state.

Oliver has more than 27 years of commercial banking experience. Most recently, he was at JPMorgan Chase Bank, where he served as business banking manager for Indiana and Central Illinois.

BMO Harris has increased its commercial banking team from six people to eight over the past several months, Oliver said, and he soon plans to hire four additional employees.

“The strategy is to try to expand this market as much as we can in a prudent way,” Oliver said.

BMO Harris is expanding its commercial banking efforts locally for two reasons, Oliver said. The strong economy is one reason, plus the bank has had some recent vacancies that gave it the chance to hire several new people with a commercial lending background.

The bank's typical commercial customers are companies with annual revenue ranging from $20 million to $500 million, Oliver said. It sees manufacturing, health care, life sciences, distribution and logistics as local areas of opportunity where the bank could offer loans for capital expansion projects or working capital, as well as treasury management services.

“All of those things are things that we’d love to talk to people about,” he said.

This is not the only market in which BMO Harris has been beefing up its commercial banking presence. In recent years the Canada-based bank has opened new commercial banking offices in Columbus, Ohio; Atlanta and Dallas, among other cities.

BMO Harris is the fifth largest bank in the Indianapolis market based on deposits, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The bank had 5.6 percent of local deposits—nearly $2.9 billion—as of June 30.