BMO (BMO Investorline): Linking accounts | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Need to create links to the BMO chequing accounts from the other bank.

BMO still does not offer linking to external accounts to personal banking clients. That's likely why the BMO personal banking staff don't know what you are asking about.

The BMO business banking staff will likely know if one asks them about customer automated funds transfers (CAFT). That is the ability to originate direct deposits and pre-authorized debits.

Canadian Western Bank page CAFT for Business explains them.

AccountLink BMO chequing account and the BMO InvestorLine brokerage account are not the same.

The chequing account is issued by CDIC member Bank of Montreal. The brokerage account is with CIPF member BMO InvestorLine Inc.

Cash in the brokerage account is automatically transferred to the chequing account. Cash is taken from the chequing account automatically when the brokerage account is short of cash.

No. The transfer is automatic.

You can test the above by opening your AccountLink chequing account online in banking and see the $$ balance. Then open your BMO IL account and look for cash available. The $$ should be exactly the same if the accounts are truly linked.

Okay. Perhaps I stand corrected. I have never actually paid attention that closely simply because I rarely do any of those kinds of transactions.

I will be doing one "the other way" this week so will take note. Meaning I am selling a bit of BMT104 ISA for the purposes of making a Bill Payment (transfer to Scotia iTrade) from the AccountLink chequing account. I will report when/how I saw the cash balance show up in AccountLink chequing.

That aligns with the description in the client agreements about the automatic transfer of cash from the "Investment Account" to the "Bank Account".

It is hard to confirm your transit number as there are at least five possible transits for the AccountLink chequing accounts.

Have a look at the first page of your BMO InvestorLine monthly statements. Your AccountLink chequing accounts should be listed there under "AccountLink Service".

You could have more than one chequing account: a Canadian dollar one and a US$ one. For each AccountLink chequing account, the first four digits of the transit and the full account number should appear there.

Note: The account numbers of the chequing accounts are not the same as the account number of the associated BMO InvestorLine brokerage account.

I don't know what Fritz meant by "Bill Pay at BMOIL". To or from BMOIL?

To move money from BMOIL, one uses the Bill Payment function in the AccountLink chequing account. To move funds to BMOIL, one would use the Bill Payment function from the third party bank to the BMOIL brokerage account number....IF that third party bank account has BMO Investorline as a Bill Payee in its list of payees. The payee list varies from financial institution to financial institution.