JPMorgan Names PayPal Vet Shivananda as New Tech Chief

JPMorgan Chase has reportedly named former PayPal executive Sri Shivananda as its chief technology officer.

Shivananda will take up the CTO post later this month and succeed A.J. Lang, who announced his retirement earlier this year, Reuters reported Monday (June 10), citing an internal memo.

The new CTO — who held the same role at PayPal — has a record of business growth and innovation that will help JPMorgan to “tackle complex technological challenges,” Lori Beer, the bank’s chief information officer (CIO) wrote in the memo.

The report notes that Beer has also recently recruited two senior leaders from Amazon as the banking giant works to deploy its $17 billion tech budget: Manoj Sindhwani as CIO for its chief data and analytics office, and Darrin Alves as CIO for infrastructure platforms such as JPMorgan’s public cloud.

Reuters cites a presentation the company gave in May that said artificial intelligence (AI) implementation could add $1 billion to $1.5 billion to the bank. Tech workers account for a fifth of JPMorgan’s 312,000-person workforce.

“Improving the efficiency of both our software engineering and our physical infrastructure is a top priority with the end goal being to get maximum productivity out of tech dollars,” while also enticing talent, Chief Financial Officer Jeremy Barnum said in May.

Last month, Mary Erdoes, head of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management unit, said all news hires were being given AI training.

“This year, everyone coming in here will have prompt engineering training to get them ready for the AI of the future,” Erdoes said at the bank’s investors day.

She said AI is helping her department in two ways: boosting revenue growth and saving time. There’s less focus on “hunting and pecking,” she said, as bankers can now call up certain information on potential investments while on the phone with clients

In addition, AI is replacing “no joy work” by eliminating rote tasks and saving some analysts two to four hours each workday, Erdoes said.

And in April, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon devoted a large section of his yearly letter to shareholders on AI, placing the technology in the same category as the printing press.

“While we are investing more money in our AI capabilities, many of these projects pay for themselves,” Dimon wrote. “Over time, we anticipate that our use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job, as well as impact our workforce composition. It may reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”