America’s biggest bank, JPMorgan, with a balance sheet total of over $3 trillion is set to launch its new offering in the UK next week.
Digital bank Chase was first announced back in January and has so far hired around 400 people to work on the project. It marks the first expansion for the bank in its 222-year history. Chief executive Jamie Dimon visited the Chase Canary Wharf offices in London last week.
In January, Gordon Smith, CEO of Consumer & Community Banking and co-President of JPMorgan Chase, said: “We are bringing Chase to the UK because we want to provide customers with a new banking choice – one that will enable them to benefit from a simple and exceptional banking experience, built on the significant capabilities of JPMorgan Chase.
“The UK has a vibrant and highly competitive consumer banking marketplace, which is why we’ve designed the bank from scratch to specifically meet the needs of customers here.”
While the full details of its launch are still to be officially announced, sources believe that the news will come early next week. CEO Sanoke Viswanathan, previously Chief Administrative Officer and Head of Strategy at JPMorgan’s Corporate & Investment Bank, told The Times that the parent company would be patient about Chase’s progress, but that it needed to have “millions of customers over time” to be viable.
In an interview with the newspaper, he added that JPMorgan wanted to disrupt established players and grow to be “in the top few” banks in the UK. Its customers will be served by a purpose-built customer contact centre in Edinburgh.
Earlier in June, the bank snapped up British digital wealth manager and robo-advisor Nutmeg as part of its expansion plans. In Dimon’s annual letter to shareholders in April, he stated that fintechs have “done a great job in developing easy-to-use, intuitive, fast and smart products” while acknowledging that banks are held back by “inflexible legacy systems” and “extensive regulation”.
Chase is expected to offer retail bank accounts through a digital app with plans to build out full consumer banking services over time.
While the bank is set to compete with domestic startups such as Monzo, Revolut and Starling, it could still be some time before Chase takes on US rival Goldman Sachs, which launched the successful savings account, Marcus, in 2018.
