BMO Harris Bank is expanding the scope of its in-house accelerator from a local to a national program. The Chicago-based bank is accepting applications from fintech startups for the 2019 BMO Harris/1871 Innovation Program through the end of the day today.

Ben Schack, Head of U.S. BMO Partners, and his team oversee the program, along with Chicago-based tech incubator 1871. Schack said the program is about giving the bank a way to access ideas and technologies from earlier-stage companies “in a somewhat structured way, beyond just conversations.”

A recent survey of more than 400 global retail banking executives found banks are interested in bringing outside help in, with 31% of respondents saying that investing in fintech startups is part of their bank’s innovation strategy. Banks are also creating in-house accelerator/incubator programs, as 20% of respondents indicated.

In an interview with Bank Innovation, Schack discussed what collaboration with fintechs looks like at BMO Harris. An edited version of his conversation with BI follows.

BI: What kinds of startups does BMO Harris target for the program?

Schack: This year we’re focused on reaching new customers and deepening relationships with current customers. So, it tends to be a little bit on the business model side, the customer engagement side and the growth side, as opposed to analytics and some general-purpose things that are more back-office focused, which is kind of de-emphasized for us this year.

BI: What was behind expanding the scope of the program this year?

Schack: As the program has matured, we feel like we’ve learned enough about how to do this that we can offer a valuable program, even to startups who aren’t locally here in Chicago. Part of it is about making sure we have access to the best ideas, the best innovation and the most promising potential partners from around the country. I should say, though, that the Chicago and Wisconsin markets, and our Midwest footprint, are still really important to us. We still look at this program as a way to make a strong impact on firms and the business community within our local markets. But we’re also open to meeting firms from elsewhere.

BI: What does the bank offer fintechs in terms of mentoring and support?

Schack: The program in previous years has had a lot to offer when it comes to questions like, ‘How do you partner with an enterprise?’, ‘How do you sell into an enterprise?’, ‘How do you take advantage of enterprise skills and capabilities to mature your product or service?’ But we’ve had relatively little to say about how you navigate the investment community, or how you access investors and venture capital, if that’s the right thing for your firm. As we talked with entrepreneurs, we really kind of heard that as being a gap in our program and an opportunity for us to add more value for them.

We like to think of our program as being very entrepreneur-friendly. We’re completely nonexclusive. We don’t require startups to take money from us and we don’t ask for access to their IP. And by connecting them with venture capital investors, both for feedback and mentoring, which they don’t always get from that community, we realized that was something we could do to really kind of add more value for the entrepreneurs.

BI: What does BMO Harris look for fintech partners, in general?

Schack: The 1871 program is great for accessing a certain type of startup but it’s certainly not the only thing we’re doing. One of the things we look for with later-stage startups is really around alignment with our strategy, with our values, with our brand, and making sure that it’s somebody that’s comfortable with us and that we’re comfortable partnering with, publicly, out in the market. That’s important to us. Certainly, I would say the focus on the customer and customer experience — and partners who bring solutions to important problems for our customers — is important to us as well. And then it’s just feasibility. We want to make sure that we’re working with people who are really ready to work with us to the greatest extent possible. There’s a number of different lenses that we would put on there.

BI: How does BMO Harris decide when to do something in-house and when to bring in a partner?

Schack: There are times when it really makes sense to do things in-house. One example would be when we’re trying to build an enterprise capability, a reusable capability, that we can use across lots of different parts of our business. A lot of times, that may lead us down the build-it-ourselves road. Or it could be something where we’re trying to differentiate an experience and make it very uniquely BMO. I think that would be another scenario where building makes sense.

On the partnership side, we do kind of believe in this notion of ‘better together’ and we think there are a lot of opportunities to work with partners to deliver more, quickly, and sometimes more inexpensively. I think there are also things we can do through partnerships that, frankly, we can’t build ourselves. An example might be our partnership with AutoGravity, which is a San Francisco-based fintech with a marketplace solution for car shopping and financing. Basically, there are multiple lenders that compete through that marketplace and they’ve got a strong dealer network and are really focused on that space. We couldn’t necessarily build all of that ourselves because that’s a marketplace where you need multiple players on each side of the platform for it to really work. That’s a case where a partnership makes a ton of sense, and accessing scale distribution that way is certainly a good argument in favor of taking a partner route, as opposed to a build route.

From the partner’s perspective, we think we have a lot to offer that is attractive for a fintech partner as well. For instance, there’s our brand, both here in the U.S. and in Canada, the balance sheet, the existing customer base, and, in some cases, our physical distribution and network, which can be hard for fintechs to replicate on their own. We think that those things combined with the capabilities, innovation, and nimbleness that come from fintech partners can create some really valuable opportunity.

BMO Harris, which trades on the NYSE under the ticker symbol BMO, has a market cap of $50.4 billion.