Dimon On How JPMC Will “Attack New City”

At a time when bank branches are shrinking, mobile banking is on the rise and big banks are replacing people with machines, JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon shared a little news that might have a big impact on the bank’s future physical footprint. 

“We are thinking about attacking a new city for the first time — in a major way,” Dimon said this morning (July 14) on the second-quarter earnings call with analysts. 

Of course, like most major banks, JPMC has focused its efforts on balancing branch cutbacks with online investments and that goal was iterated during the earnings call. Saying that JPMC looks at each branch case city by city, Dimon emphasized that Chase will be taking away some branches as it adds others. 

“You have to have the right footprint,” Dimon said. “We’re not getting smaller because we’re guessing. We’re getting smaller because there’s less of a need for operations in branches now. People are doing far more on mobile phones. So we actually do it city by city.”

CFO Marianne Lake — who just last quarter became the dominant voice in the analyst earnings calls — said that Chase’s perspective on balancing where to invest in branches and how to invest online has very much followed an omnichannel approach. 

“We have a place for everything in our suite and branches are very important. We’re just going to be evolving them to continue to meet customer needs,” Lake said, which she emphasized means consolidating branches in some cities and combining in others. It might also mean cutting costs by moving more toward automated services at some locations.

As JPMC invests more in mobile, its quarterly stats suggest why. JPMC now has more than 21 million active mobile customers, which is up 22 percent on the year. 

Overall on the consumer and business banking side, deposits were up 9 percent, on average, and credit card sales volume was up 7 percent. Merchant processing volume was also up 12 percent. 

As for JPMC’s quarterly results, the bank beat out expectations and had a 5.2 percent profit increase to $6.29 billion, which is up from the $5.98 billion profit seen in 2014’s Q2 results. Net revenue, however, saw a 3 percent decrease from the year prior to roughly $24.53 billion. 

“Our company had strong results this quarter, and each of our businesses performed well, with broad and consistent underlying growth. This quarter was another example of the power of our platform and risk discipline, and of being there for our clients – as we always are – in good times and in volatile markets,” Dimon said in the prepared earnings release. 

“We are focused on executing on our commitments and we’ve made good progress this quarter, including meeting regulatory requirements, reducing non-operating deposits, and adding to our capital. We are also on target to deliver on our expense commitments. We continue to add value to our customers, clients and communities, and, as always, we operate with fortress principles,” he continued. 

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