We will now go live to the presentation. Good afternoon. Welcome to JPMorgan Chase's 2026 Company Update. Welcome to the stage, Mikael Grubb.
All right. Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this event and the new and improved two seventy Park. I want to send a special thanks to the extremely dedicated folks who braved the elements and joined us in person. I guess even in the world's dominant ice hockey nation, there is such a thing as too much winter. Please remember to review the disclaimer about forward-looking statements. Before getting started, let me just quickly walk through the agenda and some logistical points for the afternoon. Jeremy is going to kick us off with a discussion of firm-wide topics, and he will also take a few questions at the conclusion of his presentation. After that, we will invite our LOB heads to the stage for the business line-focused Q&A. We will then take a quick break before wrapping the public event with Jamie's Q&A.
At that point, at least I will need a stiff cocktail, which will also be served on this floor, no reservation required. Now let's welcome our first speaker, Chief Financial Officer, Jeremy Barnum.
Welcome to the stage, Jeremy Barnum.
All right. Thank you, Mikael, and welcome, everyone, and let me add also my thanks for everyone who showed up in person. Before we get started, a health warning. Some of the slides you're about to see are, shall we say, a little bit on the dense side. The reason for that is that we want them to serve not only as a guide to today's conversation, but also as an artifact to support follow-up conversations with you over the next few months. If you don't have time to consume every number on every page, that's okay. I'll tell you the parts that we think are most important. With that, let's get started. We have branded this event Company Update, but there's no real update on these pages, and that's intentional. Consistency is a hallmark of our operating model.
Our strategic framework is not just words on a page, it is deeply woven into our culture and guides our actions every day. We've highlighted the key elements here. Together, these strengths enable us to serve our clients, customers, and communities through any environment and support a relentless focus on generating long, excuse me, long-term shareholder value. Our completeness, global presence, diversification, and scale are not just attributes. They are competitive advantages that allow us to serve our clients and customers in unique ways. The composition and connectivity of our business lines creates durability and allows us to generate robust results across a wide range of environments, and our operating model enables us to support our clients and customers through their entire life cycle and through multiple generations. The metrics on the right-hand side of the page bring this to life.
Calling out a few of them: We have 4.8 trillion in AUM, we serve over 86 million U.S. customers, we operate in over 100 markets globally, and we process about 12 trillion of payments a day. Sorry, I accidentally forward skipped my notes. Okay. We are also proud of the leadership positions our businesses hold. The market share gains we've achieved are the result of a decade of continued investment and effort. As we look to the future, our focus remains on growing our share and expanding our lead in order to secure the position of the company through many cycles to come, even as competition intensifies. Despite the intensifying competition, our three lines of business delivered exceptional performance and had a number of notable accomplishments in 2025.
Before diving into the specifics, I want to take a step back and frame this page through the lens of scale and investment, which we define here not only as the increase in allocated capital, but also as the cumulative investment spend across technology, people, marketing, and more, that each business has deployed over the past five years, as shown on the top of the page. In many cases, the results that you see here are the product of investments made even longer ago. With that context, let's review some of the results in 2025. In CCB, we delivered 32% ROE, added 10.4 million new card accounts, and reached nearly $1.3 trillion in client investment assets, which is more than double the level we saw in 2019.
The CIB posted an 18% ROE and 12% revenue growth, with record revenue in markets, payments, and security services, and we expanded global corporate banking coverage to over 40 countries. In AWM, we delivered a 40% ROE and a 36% pre-tax margin, with record total client asset flows of $553 billion, positive across all channels and regions. We also had the largest active ETF launch on record. With this backdrop of strong LOB results, let's take a step back and discuss recent performance for the company as a whole. 2025 was another year of outstanding results, both in absolute terms and relative to our peers.
We delivered 12% growth in EPS, 11% growth in tangible book value per share, and an ROTCE of 20%. As we show you on the bottom left, this year's performance represents a continuation of our long-term outperformance over the last decade. As I just highlighted, our focus remains firmly on long-term growth and performance, with the goal of maximizing long-term shareholder value. These ambitions are underpinned by our ongoing investment in bankers, advisors, and new markets here in the U.S. and internationally, as well as in our technology platform, which continues to drive innovation and efficiency across the firm. We are also deeply connected to the communities in which we operate, and we are committed to being a responsible corporate citizen. Whether it's our community centers or our recently announced Security and Resiliency Initiative, these efforts are both integral to our mission and deliver significant commercial benefits.
Before we turn to the 2026 outlook, I'd like to briefly touch on the macro environment. We remain cautiously optimistic. The page shows a stacked ranking of the factors we feel better or worse about, none of which will be new to you. Currently, the macro backdrop remains supportive and the consumer remains resilient. The labor market is the key driver there. Business volumes, activity, and pipelines all remain very strong. At the same time, our traditional competitors are also benefiting from the supportive backdrop. New challengers continue to emerge, making competition more intense than ever. This environment reinforces the need for vigilance. Just to manage your expectations, might make us a little bit less eager to share certain valuable competitive information.
As we move through the next few slides, you'll see that we have dedicated pages for each of our major revenue categories, starting with NII ex-Markets. Our outlook for 2026 NII ex-Markets is unchanged from what we shared at earnings last month. We continue to expect about $95 billion. Breaking down the drivers of the year-on-year growth, we expect a headwind of about $2 billion from rates. The outlook follows the forward curve, which currently implies 83 basis points lower average IORB year-on-year, resulting in deposit margin compression. This is more than offset by balance sheet growth and mix. On the loan side, we expect card to revert closer to long-term trends, but still expect strong growth of more than 6%.
In both CIB and AWM, we expect modest loan growth as a result of a continuation of last year's trends, healthy acquisition finance activity, strong infrastructure, and AI-related spending, as well as ongoing strength in securities-based lending and subscription finance. For deposits, we anticipate low to mid-single-digit growth in banking and wealth management, which I'll discuss in more detail on the next page. We expect payments and security services in CIB to deliver continued deposit growth, albeit at a less robust pace than last year's exceptionally strong performance. In AWM, as clients continue to optimize their cash and redeploy into investments, we expect deposit balances to remain essentially flat. We now expect markets NII to be about $9.5 billion. I'll cover this in more detail when I discuss the markets business in a couple of pages.
Let's take a closer look at the trends we're observing in retail deposits within CCB. As the headline says, we expect retail deposit growth to resume in 2026. Let's take a moment to review how we got here and expand on some of the drivers and dynamics. As a starting point, we saw significant balance growth during the pandemic as government stimulus drove cash balances higher and rates were low. As we emerged from the pandemic and the Fed's hiking cycle began, yield-seeking flows grew, and that, combined with higher spending, drove balances down. In 2025, our total balances were about flat. We did see an inflection point in our. Although total balances were about flat, we did see an inflection point in our checking balances per account, which grew 1% year-on-year.
Our checking account acquisition has remained strong and yield-seeking behavior continues to slow. At the same time, yield-seeking flows captured by CCB, and in particular by JP Morgan Wealth Management, have actually increased during this period. While this is a small drag on deposit growth, it is an important long-term tailwind and proof point for our affluent wealth strategy. As you'll recall, last year, we shared what we expected for 2026 deposit growth based on a range of economic scenarios. The central case at the time was about 6% deposit growth, and relative to then, rates are higher, yield-seeking flows are higher, and the consumer savings rate is lower. When you put all those effects together, we expect something more like low to mid-single-digit growth this year based on the current central economic scenario.
Moving beyond the narrow question of our best guess for this year's deposit growth, the more important point is the consistent track record of account growth, which provides the foundation for long-term deposit growth. In 2025, we originated 1.7 million net new checking accounts. Now, turning to NIR ex-Markets. We gather that many of you have questions about the NIR outlook, particularly in the context of our expense guidance. While we are not providing a formal outlook, we are expecting higher NIR across the board, except in home lending, where the continued market headwinds are well known. I'll leave you to review the details of this page on your own time, but you can see that we're giving you some directional insights on NIR across the major sub-lines of business.
Of course, all of this remains highly market dependent, and it's important to acknowledge that our outlook assumes a constructive macro backdrop. In other scenarios, particularly in the event of a sustained equity market sell-off, revenue in a number of our capital market-sensitive businesses would be challenged. In such a scenario, we would, of course, also have some offsets on the expense side. To round out the revenue story, let's talk about markets. The performance of our markets business over the past six years has been truly exceptional. At times during this period, we have asked ourselves whether the performance was sustainable, and if not, whether there was a risk of reverting to 2019 levels. By averaging the 2020 to 2024 period, as we've done on this page, it becomes clear that it is probably time to retire that conversation.
Of course, markets revenue is volatile, and a repeat of the 2025 performance is not guaranteed. The themes that have supported the recent growth, higher levels of volatility, a healthy corporate wallet, and strong primary activity remain in place. Now, let me take a second to make a few points about business dynamics and revenue streams. As a reminder, we continue to encourage you to look at the markets business on a total revenue basis. The core of our long-term value proposition to clients is meeting their evolving needs as a reliable counterparty across the full product suite, supporting them through cycles and different market conditions. We believe this client-centric approach will grow the franchise sustainably, and the composition of the revenue inside that growth is less of a focus.
Nonetheless, let me take a second to discuss financing revenue and a related point, which is markets NII. We continue to find that competitive financing capabilities are a key enabling product to grow with our most complex clients. Last year, we told you that it represents a growing portion of our revenue, and that remained true in 2025. In terms of the markets NII outlook, we expect it to be around $9.5 billion this year, up from $3.3 billion last year, and slightly higher than the $8 billion we indicated at fourth quarter earnings. It's important to continue reminding you that we expect the majority of this increase to be offset by lower NIR.
This is because much of the increase comes from the impact of lower rates on the funding expense for portions of the business that typically involve a derivative offset, which, as you know, is accounted for as NIR. The gray bar on the right reflects the expected growth in loans and cash financing driven by client demand. To the extent that demand materializes, the associated NII would likely contribute to the bottom line. As you can see, that effect is quite a modest portion of the overall increase. Looking ahead, despite the many leading positions of our various markets businesses, we feel optimistic about our ability to grow as we execute the priorities you can see listed on the right. With that, let's pivot to the expense outlook.
Consistent with what we shared at earnings, we expect 2026 adjusted expense to be about $105 billion, which is up about $9 billion year-over-year. Starting with the first bar, you can see the contribution from bankers, advisors, and branches, which represents our client-facing employees and spaces that are critical to driving growth for years to come. The details on the top right highlight the continued growth in JPMorgan Wealth Management and Private Bank client advisors, as well as senior bankers in the CIB. You may have seen the announcement we just put out on our branch expansion plans. This year, we're planning to open more than 160 branches in over 30 states and renovate nearly 600 locations.
The branch strategy remains core to our growth as it brings us into new markets, including low to moderate income and rural communities. The second-largest category is volume and revenue-related expenses. About 30% of this increase is revenue gross ups. In other words, activities where each dollar of expense is directly linked to at least $1 of revenue, with auto leases being the most prominent example. The remainder of this category includes what we also consider good expense, as it is directly linked with higher revenues, increased activity, and greater client engagement with our products. Technology is also a significant driver, and I'll cover that in more detail in a moment. The next part is marketing spend, which is generally highly targeted, with predictable payback periods as it drives both demand for card products and results in strong customer engagement across the rest of our consumer franchise.
There is a small other bucket that is grouped with real estate. On real estate, there is some catch-up on expense, as we've needed to add space to accommodate the headcount growth over the past few years, while also bringing employees back to the office. We're modernizing our older spaces and adjusting seating densities to improve the employee experience. Finally, while inflation doesn't have its own bar, it's present across all categories, whether it's technology, hardware, labor, or real estate. Even as inflation moderates, these effects add up. On the next page, we address the question of efficiency. You will recall that last year we talked about living within our means. This was not a cap on expense growth or a crude hiring freeze.
Instead, we were setting a cultural tone to discourage automatically hiring people as the default response to any given problem or opportunity, while still making it clear that the priority was revenue growth. The left-hand side of the page shows the result of that. We grew in client-facing roles and very modestly in some technology roles, while shrinking in operations and support functions. We've also seen productivity gains. Given our size, no single initiative is likely to be material to the firm, but our ability to identify and implement a broad range of efficiency opportunities has been critical to our ability to simultaneously show industry-leading growth and profitability. Just to highlight one example from the page, in CCB, just in the last year, accounts per operations employee are up 6%. As we think about 2026, we're taking a more flexible approach to living within our means.
The discipline remains, we'll continue to be laser-focused on productivity. At the same time, the businesses do see compelling opportunities to develop additional products, features, and capabilities for clients and customers. We've budgeted some additional headcount and technology to deliver that. While efficiency and productivity are always priorities, we are not managing the firm for short-term operating leverage. We feel instead that long-term PPNR growth is a much better lens through which to assess our investments. As we show you on the right-hand side of the page, our PPNR CAGR continues to outpace, outpace both revenue and expense growth, demonstrating the power of sustained investment in a scaled franchise.
As I just mentioned, technology remains a major driver of our expense growth, as we expect to spend about $19.8 billion this year, up 10% year-on-year, reflecting business growth and demand for new products and capabilities. On the bottom left, you'll see the breakdown across the lines of business. On the right, we've broken out the main drivers. In the first bucket, the contributors of growth are regular way inflation, and perhaps not surprisingly, higher hardware expense, as A.I.-related shortages are pushing up memory prices. The second bucket is volume and feature demand, which is driving growth in technology infrastructure costs, including the public cloud, as well as higher software costs associated with higher volumes.
While the absolute spend growth rate has been in the low single digits, we have continued to see unit cost reductions across a wide range of modern infrastructure products. We continue to invest and are spending about $1.2 billion more this year on major projects, and we've identified about $600 million in efficiencies, some of which are AI-related, enabling us to invest more than we otherwise could. Other areas of ongoing investment include AI initiatives, projects to enhance the customer experience, and platform build-outs like Apple Card. As we mentioned before, we are probably past the point of peak modernization. That said, we will always continue to modernize our technology and have shifted focus from infrastructure modernization to modernizing the underlying application code and data. An important reason we need to continue modernizing is to ensure we are positioned to benefit from AI and other cutting-edge innovation.
Unsurprisingly, AI is one of the most frequently discussed topics, both internally and externally, so I want to highlight a few points about our approach. We continue to invest in AI, and we're seeing tangible benefits in multiple areas. Machine learning and analytical AI have been driving improvements in revenue and expense for many years, particularly in marketing and fraud detection. The share of generative AI continues to grow as a percentage of our total AI activity, and overall, we've doubled the number of use cases in production this year. We're focusing our efforts on the highest impact areas, such as customer service, including call center efficiency and personalized client insights, as well as in technology, particularly for our software engineers.
We're also pleased with the widespread adoption of LLM Suite, our internal generative AI platform, and more importantly, with the evolution of how employees are using it, as they move beyond brainstorming and summarization to using our internal APIs to safely integrate gen AI capabilities into business-aligned applications and daily workflows. Looking forward, we will continue to challenge ourselves to drive transformation and while carefully managing the associated risks. We believe these efforts will help us scale and continue to improve products, services, and client experiences in this increasingly competitive environment. Now, turning to credit. There's not much new to say since earnings. We continue to expect this year's card net charge-off rate to be about 3.4%. The consumer remains resilient, and as always, the labor market is the critical factor to watch.
I want to take this opportunity to provide a bit more color on a few credit-related topics of interest. Starting with Apple Card, we've received some questions about the relatively higher subprime % in that portfolio. This segment already makes up about 15% of our current portfolio, and given the relative size of Apple Card, we don't expect that number to increase meaningfully. The more important point is that we are not strangers to subprime, so we feel confident that we have the data, experience, and capabilities necessary to successfully integrate the portfolio. Another topic of frequent discussion is the so-called K-shaped economy, or to be more precise, economic heterogeneity. Different commentators define this differently and come to different conclusions.
Wading into that debate is beyond the scope of this presentation, but from the narrow lens of the impact of this heterogeneity on credit performance, the problematic version for us would be a significant divergence in spend growth between the highest and lowest income segments. What we're seeing in the data is that while there is a difference, the difference is not outside the pre-pandemic range, and lower-income consumers remain resilient. With respect to the AI ecosystem, nothing has really changed since we talked about it in the fourth quarter. There's a lot of demand for financing, and we expect to continue participating in it, but we are not going to compromise on terms to chase share. Another recent topic of market interest is the potential risk to the software industry from the advances in AI.
Our exposure to that industry is small relative to the size of the wholesale portfolio and is concentrated in the enterprise software space, and the exposure to the more vulnerable players in the broader software industry is quite small. Beyond that, the potential impact of AI disruption is obviously not limited to the software industry, we continue to look across the whole portfolio to identify emerging risks. Of course, one of the reasons for our large excess capital position is to protect us from these types of potential disruptions. Now let's turn to the question of the excess capital. We kept our excess relatively flat by taking what you might call an all-of-the-above approach while deploying in line with our capital hierarchy.
We put more capital to work for organic growth and RWA expansion, invested in unique assets with attractive return profiles, like the Apple Card, and increased the dividend and bought back shares. All the while, we maintained a significant buffer, given our cautious macro outlook and the belief that even more compelling opportunities could emerge. On the right-hand side of the page, we've attempted to account for our aggregate deployment of capital over the last few years. Notice that in this view, we have characterized investments that are expensed through the income statement as a use of capital. On this basis, you can see that our deployment has been in line with our hierarchy. We would expect this to continue going forward. Looking ahead, it appears that Basel III endgame probably won't change capital requirements significantly in either direction relative to the current rules.
That said, we're still awaiting the re-proposal, so there's some uncertainty. Importantly, GSIB remains a significant pending item. Let's spend a few minutes on liquidity. Over the last few years, we've talked a lot about capital regulation, less about liquidity. We think now is a good time to shift our focus to bank liquidity regulation and what we believe needs to change. Before starting, though, I want to briefly direct your attention to the left-hand side of the page, where we summarize some of the key attributes of our fortress balance sheet. $1.5 trillion of cash and marketable securities, as well as nearly $500 billion of additional available borrowing capacity and a number of other metrics we show you every quarter.
Now, turning to regulation, it's important to say that all of the post-2008 changes did in fact, make the system safer, but it was at the cost of an incredibly complicated framework that has not always succeeded in its stated goals. Specifically, in the case of liquidity, you can see from the graph on the left the increase in the percentage of highly liquid assets on bank balance sheets. Narrowly, that increase means that the typical balance sheet is less risky, but it also means that less credit is being extended into the real economy. More importantly, despite this apparent reduction in risk, over the last decade, we've seen a number of instances of regulators taking ad hoc actions in response to liquidity challenges in the system, most prominently in the spring of 2023.
On the top of the page, you can see how our levels of CET1 access, the shaded area, and bank LCR access, the line, have evolved since 2018. You can see how we've moved from a period where we were closer to our capital requirements, to a period now where we are closer to our liquidity requirements. To a significant extent, this is true about the banking system as a whole as well. As we say on the bottom right, the current strength of both the banking system and the macro environment makes it a good time to consider changes, so the system is more resilient the next time it is challenged. Unfortunately, I don't have time now to take you through all the dimensions of our analysis as well as our proposed solutions, but some of the key principles are on the page.
Yes, the alphabet soup of regulatory liquidity acronyms was generated by AI and by our treasurer, no less. In any case, the overarching theme is we believe the link between real-world liquidity management and regulatory requirements, including recovery and resolution planning, should be stronger in order to enable banks to manage through various stresses without the need for ad hoc interventions by the government. A second ago, I talked about our nearly $2 trillion in liquidity resources, but in LCR, only about $1 trillion of the cash and marketable securities are counted, and none of the available borrowing capacity is counted. Aligning the definition of liquidity resources more closely with the collateral value of the assets on the balance sheet, as defined by central bank facility haircuts, would help to shrink the gap.
In the end, the goal is to finish delivering on the promise of the post-2008 changes. A resilient system where bank failures are rare, but when they happen, they are orderly, do not require extraordinary government actions, and at the same time, the banking system as a whole is actively contributing to robust economic growth. All right, starting to wrap this up now. Each year, we update the stylized returns view to reflect relevant economic scenarios for the current environment. Using our internal outlook and estimated sensitivities to key variables, we show the range of ROTCE outcomes across these scenarios over a medium-term period. The scenarios cover a broad range of economic conditions, from benign to recessionary. Importantly, we do not include a full-blown GFC-style crisis. Over the years, we've come to colloquially refer to this page as the scarves page.
Running with that, the scarves you see here illustrate a few important points. First, it's generally consistent with what our realized performance has looked like over the last 10 years. A range of returns above 17% when the economy is generally healthy and stable, and lower, but still solid returns above our cost of equity when the economy is less robust, but not in a severe recession. Second, it demonstrates why we continue to feel that 17% is a reasonable expectation of our through-the-cycle returns. The dotted line represents the target. Some scenarios end up below it and some above it. In that context, we do periodically get asked whether we should raise the target, given the launch point is 20% and many scenarios produce returns above 17%. In short, the answer is no, and let me explain why.
This page will look somewhat familiar to you, as I presented a similar one last year. This year, we want to emphasize some different points. Over the years, you've heard us say that ROTCE is an output, not an input. What we mean by that is that we do not make decisions in order to achieve a particular outcome on ROTCE. Our focus is on growing long-term shareholder value, which we believe is best approximated by our ability to deploy capital at returns in excess of our cost of equity, which is correlated to, but not the same thing as, achieving a high ROTCE in isolation. Last year, I showed you that in practice, this means that much of our capital deployment will be in businesses that generate returns below 17% as we respond to the opportunity set and optimize across resource constraints.
This year, we wanted to illustrate what that looks like at the firm-wide level, which we've done on the right. Let me take a moment to explain this chart. The width of each bar is the capital of the firm, represented here by tangible book value, which has grown over time, so the bars have become wider. The Y-axis is ROTCE. The height of each bar is the ROTCE in that year. The amount of SVA we deliver is a function of both the width of the bar and the portion of it that is above the indicative cost of equity line, shown as the dark brown rectangles. In other words, the area in each quadrilateral above the line. As you can see at the bottom, our ability to generate returns in excess of our cost of equity is unrivaled by peers.
Some of these concepts may seem self-explanatory, but it's worth illustrating in the context of thinking about our target. For us, the 17% through the cycle target is not aspirational. Rather, it serves as a helpful backstop measure to think about the trade-offs between investing in every single SVA-positive business and focusing on maximizing returns. For now, we believe this is the right number, and we remain committed to generating long-term shareholder value through investments in growth, as well as expense discipline. Talking about the long term, last year at Investor Day, each of our lines of business shared their long-term ambitions. While I won't go through every item on the page, I want to emphasize that we are making progress towards these goals, though, given the longer time horizon, you shouldn't expect progress to be linear.
Our line of business CEOs will be on stage shortly to answer your questions about our businesses and will gladly provide additional perspective. In closing, as the slide shows, we believe the company's prospects are bright, and we are optimistic about the future. With that, I'm happy to take a few questions about what I've just discussed, and I would remind you that my colleagues will be on stage shortly, so while I'm happy to answer questions about the lines of business, you'll likely get higher quality answers from them. Mikael, over to you.
All right. If you have any questions, raise your hand and we'll send some folks. We will go first to Manan Gosalia from Morgan Stanley.
Great. Thank you. Manan Gosalia, Morgan Stanley. thanks, Jeremy.
In, in terms of Basel III Endgame, you mentioned that there is some uncertainty associated with, you know, what the rules might be. Use of surcharges also, there, there's some uncertainty associated with that. I guess once you have more certainty, how quickly can you deploy that excess capital? It sounds like with the liquidity slide, that you also need some changes to come through on the liquidity side. Is that correct? You know, what is, what is the time frame to deploy that capital?
Yeah, sure. That's approximately correct, and you've made some relevant points there. Let me just add a little bit of nuance there. First of all, I would reemphasize the point that you also made, that yes, everyone's assuming at this point that the RWA outcome under Basel III, approximately neutral at this point. Part of the reason for that is that the regulators have been, you know, quite transparent, including Michelle Bowman in a speech recently on, you know, what she's thinking about mortgage RWA risk weights and so on. You know, the information has been out there, and I think that the consensus outcome is sort of converging to a relatively narrow one. It's not over. Until the rule actually comes out, I think we should just not jump yet, point one.
Point two, people kind of forget about GSIB sometimes. They don't realize that those are two separate rulemakings. You know, GSIB is a very important thing that we continue to feel very strongly about the need to fix that in order to, among other things, ensure that the American banking system can remain globally competitive. The way that the GSIB surcharge punishes success is a real problem, as you obviously know, especially a problem for us. That's a big focus. Fine, setting that aside, assuming that things come out roughly in line with consensus, the reality is, that's been clear for some time, I would say, and we have had excess capital relative to any plausible range of outcome for some time.
I guess I would slightly challenge your implied mental model that we're kind of at the starting gate, ready for the starting gun to go off to start deploying. In reality, as I think my pages showed, we've done a bunch of deploy ready, and that's just going to continue, again, in line with the all-of-the-above approach. We're going to deploy, we're going to grow RWA, you know, we've done buybacks, we've done dividends, and all the other organic and inorganic opportunities are always on the table. On the final point, yes, like, we can certainly deploy it in its current form without changes to liquidity, but at the margin, you know, the, the stuff I showed on the page kind of highlights how what it winds up meaning is that the capital deployment will be disproportionately focused in relatively higher risk density instruments.
That's fine, there are many opportunities there, but what the system as a whole needs is the broadest possible set of deployment to be unlocked so that we can do our part to drive economic growth. To achieve that, you need to address some of the liquidity things that I also put on the page.
Thank you. All right, Ebrahim Poonawala from Bank of America. There should be one.
Max, just give him the mic. Yeah.
Just a question on ROTCE. I think on the earnings call, you talked about incrementally when capital is deployed, the return on equity could be below the 17% target. I'm just wondering, as you see mature customer relationships across businesses, are those return on equity, the return profile of those north of maybe 17% or even 20%, and it's because you keep growing the bank and the incremental growth is below? I'm just trying to understand, as we think about the maturation of the new clients that are coming in, structurally, is this becoming a more profitable bank?
Right. Okay, I mean, that's an interesting question. I guess, I think the answer, unfortunately, is quite nuanced, right? Because I, I think there's a couple of, at least off the top of my head, three or four different dynamics that sometimes, you know, compete with each other, shall we say. On the one hand, as you know, we're doing a ton of investment. We're growing, we're onboarding new clients. In many cases, I'm looking at some of my colleagues from the Corporate & Investment Bank, the, the growth in new clients comes with lending. That lending is relatively low returning, then you eventually get other business. Yeah, that's an example of an investment today that, as it matures, has higher returns. Similarly, CCB, where's Marianne? Branch expansion strategy obviously has the same types of characteristics, right? Yeah, sure.
If you want to, you can persuade yourself that the maturation of many of the investments that we've made are a source of a significant tailwind going forward. On the other hand, like, there's a bunch of excess capital, and we generate a bunch of organic capital every year. As I think we tried to emphasize this year, and we emphasized last year, too, it is simply value destructive to return capital to shareholders just because the opportunity does not return 17% when the alternative is buying back stock at whatever, 2.8 or 3 times tangible book. That's also not the same thing as being a sort of dumb SVA maximizing machine. You know, Jamie is not a fan of the SVA acronym, which is why we talk about it as long-term shareholder value generation.
Buying, you know, generic par assets and adding bank leverage to them is fake SVA. That's not what we're going to do. Organic, good customer business at a 14% return is obviously better for us than buying back stock. So that's how you get the mix of push and pull in terms of the evolution of the ROTCE.
All right, we'll take our last question for Jeremy from the Zoom, Matt O'Connor from Deutsche Bank. Please unmute your line.
Hi, I just want to clarify on the markets NII. I guess first.
We're having some audio problems, Matt.
Am I echoing back?
There's, like, a specific audio issue. The image looks good, actually. Your bandwidth is probably okay.
Maybe I'll email my question, and, and it can be addressed later then.
I, Matt. Okay.
Matt, we'll probably have.
Mary thinks you should turn your camera off and off.
How about now?
No.
All right. Matt, we'll, we'll, we'll go to the next question. Sorry. Maybe we'll take one from the room if there is one. Yes, Chris Kotowski, go ahead.
Yeah, Chris Kotowski from Oppenheimer. Just, all of us listen to an awful lot of bank earnings calls, just two or three years ago, it was like everybody was on an RWA diet. Everybody was getting their returns higher, now I feel like every earnings call you're on, every bank management feels like they've earned the right to grow and, and to spend more. You'll even hear it from the European banks, and, you know, even Citi kind of praised their little expense number. I'm think, wondering, have you noticed that have an impact on the effectiveness of your spending? Has, has the competition increased, and how would you measure that?
Yeah, look, I think there's absolutely no question that the competition is longer. We've been talking about that for a while, right? I mean, the, the rest of the system has been preparing itself for a long time, you know, the U.S. system and even the European system. At this point, you know, there was a while where there were some significant tailwinds just from the weaknesses of our competitors. I just don't think that's true anymore, you know, and you see that in a bunch of different ways, and I think, you know, my colleagues can probably give you examples in a second. That's fine, right? I mean, that's healthy. We, we never shy away from competition. It's there, it's real, and it's hard. And, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, the nature of the competition is different, too.
Like, it's not just the large traditional banks, it's also other types of competitors. It's everywhere, that's why, you know, obviously, we're gonna do it judiciously, we're gonna do it with discipline, we're gonna do it in an economically rational way. This is not the environment in which to be penny wise and pound foolish. In some fundamental sense, yeah, I agree with you. I don't know how you measure it, but I agree.
All right. Thank you, Jeremy, we'll now let the LOB heads take the stage.
Please welcome to the stage Marianne Lake, Mary Callahan Erdoes, Doug Petno, and Troy Rohrbaugh.
I know you're all very eager to ask questions. Before that, I actually have a question, and it is for Troy, and I was wondering if you could take us through the banking and markets guidance for Q1.
Sure. I, I feel like this year, Mikael wanted to go with guidance before you get to ask questions. This quarter has started out for both banking and markets very well. In IB fees, year-on-year, we're currently forecasting up mid-teens, and if the quarter remains constructive, that could easily be the high teens. For markets, year-on-year, we're currently forecasting up mid-teens as well. As all of you know, that is, you know, very dependent upon volatility and other factors in the market, and it feels like volatility continues to pick up almost every day. Again, we're hopeful for the quarter. It started well, but there's definitely plenty left of it.
All right. Thank you, Troy. Mike Mayo, go ahead.
This is a question for everybody on the panel, and we're in the middle of the AI scare trade, and some of the views expressed, I think, have some merit, right? You have to adapt to survive. Remember the old JPMorgan from the early 1990s, they didn't quite adapt, but now you guys own them. There are some merit to this. On the other hand, some of the views expressed seem really, really stupid. When you look at your businesses, are you an AI and tech victim or beneficiary? In plain English, if you're a beneficiary, why is that the case, and what metrics are you monitoring? Thank you.
I, I can, I can just start off by saying I, I, at JPMorgan , will be an endgame winner in the AI space, and you've heard it from a lot of the, sort of, more, prolific people in the field say that it's really for the. So if you have a very high tech spend, and you know exactly what you're doing and where you're headed, and you're very disciplined about it, you have a, a higher probability that you're gonna have success.
If you also have taken pretty aggressive steps, we were one of the first companies to have both Lori Beer and Teresa be on the operating committee with a dedicated AI specialist to help us to think through how we were gonna organize ourselves, how we were gonna be disciplined about it, how we were gonna be precise about what we were gonna do, and how we were gonna measure it. Each one of us benefits from each other's successes.
We just had a business review this morning at the operating committee. We talked about something that I did in my line of business in Asset & Wealth Management, where we took 200 people, and we tried to figure out some of the controls work they have to do, where each one of them has to read 50+ pages of something and then compare, contrast, and ask the right controls questions. With some very sophisticated AI work that we did, we were able to take that technology. We have now spread it to 3,000 people across the company that have done it, and we've identified another 3,000, 4,000, maybe even 5,000 people that will be able to benefit from that.
technology, the 80 specific prompts that we've put in, and make it safer, better, less, error-prone, and frankly, take out the no-joy work in our, in our, in our employees' daily lives so that they can get on to higher level added value.
Yeah, I'm, I'm happy to add to it too. You know, I think there's a lot to be said for the fact that you're gonna get, you know, more efficiency, and the competition will become more efficient. We have some strategic advantages that we've nurtured over decades, so trust, confidence, value beyond price, our customer relationships, both the scale of them and the scale of everything, quite frankly, the depth of our relationships and our data assets. We have a bunch of strategic assets that I think are hard to replicate. That will be one of the reasons, and then only the paranoid survive. You know, we aren't walking around thinking we have the divine right to success. We are walking around, we're thinking about how to optimize the value that we give to our customers, how to perfect our processes and our systems.
You know, there will be price competition. We compete on a lot more than price. You know, deep sense of, and healthy paranoia, lots of strategic assets.
Maybe just to add on Mary's points, we didn't just start this work in the last couple of years. We had a center of excellence for machine learning and AI over the last decade. And to paint for with a finer brush within CIB, just to give you a sense of the categories of opportunity for us, one big standout category is just giving value back to clients. Think agentic commerce, better cash flow forecasting and analytics, the team productivity, banker enablement, sales enablement. We see real productivity gains there through AI and advanced analytics. We obviously have AI and ops and AI and tech. When you think about these coding assistants, we're essentially a tech company. We're center of the bull's eye for us deploying those capabilities.
We're using it in risk, fraud, compliance, extensive use cases across those, and then pricing optimization. Think loans, deposits, securities, and have a higher order of analytics around that. Every one of those categories has multiple use cases, dedicated teams, trackable KPIs, and then there's a whole book of work that's just kinda table stakes and unmeasurable, and you'll never really know. You need to do it, and you actually have to have the modern tech stack, modern data stack, and a foundation to be competitive. I think what, what were the categories we were given? One or the other. I think we're in the- one you'd want us to be in.
Yeah, I mean, all I would add is, obviously, I agree with everyone, and I think Marianne's point about the paranoia that we live in around this for every one of our businesses, we don't just think it holistically at our level or even the next level down. Like, every small piece of our franchise, we have dedicated teams, embedded people that are focused on this every day. I think one of the main points is the size and scale, even marginal gains in efficiency that we can get from AI, just accrue at levels that other people don't have. If you look at the size and scale of just something as simple as FX, just 0.25 basis points with our size and scale, just gives us a revenue outcome that other people don't have, and that's manifest across our whole business.
I think that's a huge advantage if we get it right.
All right, Erika Najarian. Go ahead.
Hi, thank you for my question. I feel like the dorky student in front of the class. The, the positive narrative where we, that started the year has very quickly over the past two weeks, and maybe wanted to address one for the CIB business and one, Mary, for your business. The first is the investment banking pipeline. I think there are a lot of concerns that, given the volatility, the pipeline is not as robust as people would like for it to be for this year. Additionally, would be interesting to see if there are any sort of update in terms of sponsor sentiment, you know, given the, you know, market hiccup.
Mary, alternatives within retail has been a big positive theme in terms of growth, and I'm wondering if you could shed some light in terms of, you know, how you're seeing the next, you know, six-12 months shape up in terms of, you know, progress and penetration?
I mean, I can, I can just start. That's, that's Anton Pil is in the back of the room and runs the part of the Alternatives business for us that focuses on making sure that we do that we find the right investments, both inside JPMorgan as well as across the street for all of our GPs that we invest in. The most important thing is sizing the risk that's appropriate for clients. I, I, I can't comment on how the rest of the industry is doing that, but as you can imagine, at JPMorgan , risk-adjusted returns, right sizing, proper disclosures, liquidity, stress testing for each and every one of our clients, all the way down to the first-time buyer of something, is of utmost importance.
We think that we have a standard that's, that's pretty high for that, and we are watching every one of these little ripples that you see in the market. We have forecasted it. We've been talking about that. You've heard that from Jamie on many earnings calls, talking about when you put less liquid investments into things that people are expecting liquidity in, it needs to have been placed properly in the client's portfolios, and we're hoping that that's the case across what we see out there. You know, whether those should be in all sorts of accounts or only in the ones that it's properly managed for, that's what the industry's gonna quickly find out here.
For investment banking, you heard the guidance, and the caveat on high teens was pointing to exactly the market conditions you described. We started the year strong. Pipelines were very good. It was broad-based. It was across DCM, ECM, and M&A. The one thing I will say in M&A, these are powerful strategic drivers. Companies really see a strategic imperative to be bigger and global, and they need growth. I think that they're seeing through a lot of market disruption, whether it be uncertainty around tariffs, some of this AI disruption, I think a lot of these transactions will survive that volatility and carry on.
Capital markets will be much more subject to whatever the broader fundamentals are, but the pipelines are very strong. It's not simply a U.S. marketplace. I mean, a large majority of the wallets in the U.S. We're seeing strength in Europe, we're seeing tremendous activity in Japan. It's very much a global opportunity right this moment. In terms of private equity, you know, if the, if the market shut down, if the IPO market slows down, and it is the most fickle of the capital markets, it may slow down some of their exits, but they have tremendous dry powder. They're looking for opportunities to invest, and they're constantly hunting, and, you know, market shakeups create disruption for them, and they behave opportunistically as well. You know, the sentiment hasn't really changed.
I think they're a little frustrated with the pace at which they're monetizing their investments, but still a tremendous opportunity, and we're staying very focused on the private equity community.
All right, let's do a Zoom question. Mr. Cassidy from RBC, go ahead and unmute your line.
Can you hear me, Mikael?
Yes.
Thank you. This is directed a little bit of a follow-up on Doug's comments, but to Doug and Troy, we've seen some disruption in the private credit markets very recently. What, what, what's your guys' read on that, number one? Number two, what are the opportunities or consequences that we should all be looking out for, for a bank like yours because of what's going on in the private credit markets at this time? Thank you.
Sure. I, I won't comment on any specific player in the market. They're all our clients, and, you know, you can read the press just like we do. I would say, I mean, people should be-- I, I'm shocked that people are shocked. I mean, the reality is, in this environment, as the world gets more volatile, as you get towards the end of a cycle, this outcome is should be expected. You know, we prepare for all of these scenarios. We stress test our book, we're very thoughtful about the risk we take. We feel that in many ways, we're quite conservative compared to our peer set. This is just part of the scenario analysis that we do on a regular basis.
Again, I think at this point it feels a bit isolated to a handful of situations, but that could quite easily change, and we're prepared for that, both from managing our own portfolio, which we feel quite comfortable about at this point, and also from the opportunity it potentially gives us and others. At this point, there's still a lot of capital in the private credit ecosystem. We see lots of deployment, we see lots of people chasing opportunities. This hasn't changed that overall ecosystem, but we're watching it closely. We're very risk discipline, we're comfortable with where we are, but I'm just a little surprised that people are so surprised. This is inevitable.
Yeah, the only thing I would add is, you know, our strategy is to serve clients, and lending is an outcome, not, not the strategy. We went into direct lending product specifically, so we'd have a broader base of debt solutions, credit solutions that could provide an agnostic capital structures financing alternative. We're not trying to acquire loans, we're building relationships, and we take a. So our model is slightly different. The underwriters that are underwriting those, those private credit or the direct lending assets for us are the same underwriters that underwrite our CNI loans generally, bringing all the level of expertise, the industry knowledge, the through the cycle judgment. It's not a loan aggregation business, it's a, it's a client business.
All right. John McDonald from Truist, go ahead.
Hi, thank you. Your question for Marianne. Marianne, to what extent are you seeing this revitalization of competitors and increased pressure and, especially in retail banking, in areas you're looking to grow? When you think about your embedded growth from all the building you've done of branches, how should we contextualize this 1.7 net new checking? Is that a hard number to keep up, or is that something you think you can grow over the next couple of years? Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks for the question. I, I would say that, I mean, you've seen that, the, a lot of our competitors have strategies now that are shockingly similar, and playbooks that are similar, and I think that, you know, imitation is the highest form of flattery, I suppose. What we have been doing and investing in for decades is working. It's working in terms of our customer experience. You saw we have record high customer experience. It's working in terms of, deposit share and, profitability. Yes, we've seen lots of people announce plans. I will say it is easier said than done. Building branches is one thing, building them in the right places, building them well, hiring the right team, having the right products and services is part of it.
When you look at our share gains in consumer banking, while 40% of it has been on new build, 60% of it has been in our legacy footprint because we're just continually refreshing and evolving our products and services and just doing it better. We have a long track record of doing it, so it'll take a bit for anyone to be able to build a muscle to catch that up. In terms of customer acquisition, which is the beginning of everything, we've been acquiring customers at a 3%-4% CAGR pretty much consistently over time, 3% last year. You know, 2-ish million net checking accounts, 1.7 million last year. I would say there was a, there was a phenomenon in 2025. Wow! No, I'll stop. No, I'm kidding.
There's a phenomenon in 2025, so we saw, you know, that was a little, it was a little harder last year. The non-resident population, was, was an issue, but we're going to grow over that this year, and we would expect that to continue, you know, onwards and upwards. We feel like we have the right playbook, we know what we're doing. We expect our share gains to continue, but we do expect the competition, you know, to be there. You know, everybody is trying, and it's not just in consumer banking. You know, we talked, somebody asked a question earlier about, you know, competitiveness everywhere. Premium card space is competitive, very competitive right now, and we're still doing quite well. Yeah.
All right, Ken, go ahead. Ken Houston.
Thanks. I'm Ken Houston from Autonomous. Maybe for the, the wholesale side of the business, a, a different question on, on wholesale deposits and just, with the advent of tokenization and potential use cases for stable coin, just how are you adapting the ecosystem based on the building blocks that you obviously already have well established in scale as we go forward, in terms of just as it become all embedded parts of the, of the environment at JPMorgan , how are you kind of facing that, and how do you expect it, you know, the defensibility of new products and, and offerings coming up also in?
Sure. I'll, I'll take a stab at it first. First off, I mean, you said it yourself, we have a, a great starting point in this business. We've been investing in the space for over a decade. Max and Umar are over here, and I would highly recommend at cocktails that you grab them because they're the experts in the space, but they've been investing in Kinexys for over a decade. We have incredible products already in the space, whether that be in our own JPMorgan Coin, which is a tokenized deposit, our support and our participation in the stablecoin environment, our tokenization of money market funds and other aspects of the business and other growing products. I think we feel really comfortable from a bank perspective. We are either at or beyond our peer set.
We also embedded in each one of our businesses on the wholesale side, whether that be secure payments, banking, or markets, at the business level, and we spend quite a bit of time on what the future ecosystem could look like. I would break it into two parts. In the market space, there's, like, tokenized assets or securities. I think in some ways we may be trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist, but the reality is, if we go that way as an industry, we're fully prepared, we're ready to trade it, we're ready to provide custody out of security service for, on a digital ledger for these types of assets. We would provide the same services that we provide in the traditional securities, and we think we'll be very competitive there.
On the payment side, Max and Umar are completely ready for the space. It's our view, tokenized deposits is the more likely logical path forward, but that could change. We think that while it may have some effects on our business in terms of people shifting from traditional deposits to tokenized deposits, with our capabilities, we can continue to grow, share, and we'll be fine in any of those outcomes, and we're prepared for it.
Yeah, of course, our clients expect that. They expect one-stop shopping from JPMorgan. We have to have every solution for them, be able to go on a continuum and things change, and we're there for them. That's the most important.
All right, we'll take a question from the webcast. Saul Martinez, please go ahead.
Saul, I think that's for you.
Oh, maybe there's some technical difficulties.
Okay. We will park Saul, and, we'll go to Stephen Chubak instead.
I was actually hoping to build on that last question, but really look at tokenization from a retail perspective, because, Marianne, one of the key concerns that we've been hearing from folks increasingly is whether it's the emergence of, you know, agentic AI tools that people can leverage to optimize their cash balances and the yields that they're earning, and the emergence of tokenized money market funds and deposits. Do you view, do you see a potential risk that if that's introduced at the retail bank, that you are going to see some level of deposit attrition as these customers become more sophisticated and just look to optimize some of their returns? Any perspective you can offer, whether this is a real risk in your view, would be very helpful.
Yeah. I mean, listen, I, I think, first of all, I should say that, yield optimization is not a new phenomenon. You know, there are plenty of high yield options that exist today for consumers who are looking for that, including within our own complex, including within the bank and in asset management. You know, we sort of offer that, but you can go elsewhere, and moving money is increasingly easy. Of course, you'll see a little bit more help in optimization, but this is not something that has been, you know, that difficult for people. I just, I would just say that that risk has been out there. Therefore, when you think about, you know, for example, the sort of advent of-- are you thinking?
Yeah, it's really more in the context of immediate settlement versus-
Right.
If I'm a Chase customer, I have to sell a money market position, wait a day.
T ransfer it to a checking account and potentially doing things like bill pay from some sort of tokenized vehicle-
Yeah.
Get that immediate time.
So in that sense, I would say our, the answer for retail is similar to the answer for Troy, which is for the vast, vast majority of consumer use cases today, to all practical intents and purposes, there's access to 24/7 real-time. It is true that, that in real assets, there is some lag, and so we're similarly going to be investing in making sure, using Kinexys for proprietary solutions. You've seen some announcements with AWS from a consortium for payments. We're going to continue to invest in understanding how we could continue to reduce friction in some of those processes. You know, we can provide real-time access to funds within our ecosystem already today.
I think that you know, I think that blockchain, I think that tokenized assets, I think that stable coins may be part of the future for retail in, you know, at some point in time, but I don't think that's going to be in the immediate future. We're building the capabilities right now.
All right, we'll try again with the Zoom. Chris McGratty from KBW, please go ahead.
Oh, great. Thank you. Moving to slide 11, where you unpack the components of PPNR over the past five years, I think it's really helpful and powerful. I believe in Jeremy's remarks, he talked about perhaps being past peak modernization. I guess my, my question is, number one, how should we think about the degree of operating leverage over the medium term? Then secondarily, if that's the right conclusion, maybe comments by business line would be great. Thank you.
Yeah. All right, I'm back. Look, I don't want to, like, bore you with the, like, we don't believe in operating leverage speech, I kind of do think that I need to give it. I think as we were thinking about this, you know, so let me just give it because it's actually interesting. Number one, in any given year, and we've seen this over the prior cycle, realistically, the operating leverage number is going to be primarily driven by revenue dynamics, not expense dynamics. Number two, as you go from the short term to the long term, the question is then, okay, you know, Jamie always talks about how, like, it's not realistic to have, like, the ever-expanding margins that are associated actually delivering operating leverage year after year after year. It's not consistent with capitalism.
Now, sure, if you're a company with a serious expense problem that's extremely inefficient, it's reasonable to have your kind of near-term plan be: I'm going to deliver a lot of operating leverage over the next few years, and that's going to return me to reasonable margins, and that is my PPNR growth delivery strategy. A company like us, which is starting at a very efficient place with very healthy margins, operating leverage is just not how we deliver growth fundamentally. Now, obviously, that's not the same as saying we don't care about expenses, and we are, you know, very committed to being extremely disciplined about it. We do recognize the market doesn't love years like this year, where, you know, at least according to the analyst consensus, we will have negative operating leverage.
We believe very strongly that when you're in the position that we're in as a company, focusing on those types of metrics is a recipe for underinvesting in the future and for seriously weakening your strategic position. You know, in the context of that, the peak modernization point is that, like, you know, reaching the peak is not the same as having it go to zero. We're still spending money on modernization, and we will always modernize our infrastructure. You know, it's just the focus is shifting from kind of a particular moment of a lot of focus on cleaning up the data center state to a focus on modernizing applications, rewriting things, modernizing data, etcetera.
Yeah, if I just maybe build on that point slightly, you know, because when you think about our expense base and what we spend on strategic investments, I'll just use CCB as an example of that, you know, a lot of our investments pay back, will sort of break even over a few years and pay back over a longer period, but are extremely profitable. When we build branches, when we acquire cards, when we're, you know, building, spending on marketing more broadly, these are investments that are going to drive long-term growth and profitability at strong margins. We don't want to feel constrained this year because of dynamics that are going on. We're just looking very much at the long term and spending every accretive dollar that we can well.
Okay, Glenn Schorr, go ahead.
Thanks, Glenn Schorr, Evercore. Troy, I wanted to see if we could drill down a little bit more on your shock that people are shocked comment. I was a little shocked to hear that.
I think you should save that one for Jamie.
The implication is, forgive me for putting words, put me straight if I get it wrong, the implication is that this is not liquidity-led volatility on certain products. There were some loans extended that are actually going to have some real loss content. If that's the case, that means the equity is zero. I guess I'm just looking for perspective. I heard your comments about your book, perspective overall, what kind of loss content are we looking in, is it isolated in private markets? Because, you know, there's, it's a wide-ranging investment field that usually credit cycles aren't isolated to public or private. It's a broader swath of companies.
Yeah, I mean, I, I almost think in some ways, you, you answered your own question. We don't view this depending on how the economic environment develops, either this year or into next, even into 2027, that it'll be isolated to a very small part of private credit. First of all, when we say private credit, the ecosystem is huge now. It goes from very large investment-grade deals to very small middle-market companies that are below investment grade. It, it's a huge spectrum. Also, the public and private markets are merging together. Some of the largest deals out there are now hybrid deals. There's some very large deals that, you know, in some ways are done in the private space, but look like public deals for all intents and purposes.
You know, our view is that this isn't going to be isolated to just private credit. As you move forward, get near the end of a cycle, if it were to get more of a significant downturn, we'd expect this to be a little bit more broad-based and not be isolated to just private credit. The boss may have a slightly different view. I, I don't think so, but more broadly, like, we don't think about it as just private credit. We think about it as the whole credit ecosystem. As Doug mentioned, we use the same underwriting standards. Yes, we understand each space is different. They all have their own characteristics, but ultimately, it's credit. It's going to be across the whole spectrum if we get a more significant downturn, it won't be isolated there.
In terms of your question of where are we specifically right now, it appears to be isolated, much like the things we announced in the third quarter, were isolated from our perspective. Doesn't mean they're good or we're proud of them, but ultimately, more and more of these things happen as you get, like, late cycle. At this point, they're arguably isolated, but that could change.
All right, Ebrahim Poonawala, go ahead.
Just, Troy, just talk to us in terms of, Jeremy talked about all the changes in regulations. When we think about banks versus non-banks, regulatory arbitrage, there have been many areas where banks have lost market share over the last decade. When you look at the playing field today, do you think you've run the markets business for a long time, are you better positioned to compete with the non-banks? When we think about market makers trying to get into high touch trading, gain share there, just when you look through all of that, do you think you're better positioned to defend and even gain share relative to some of these players?
Sure. You mean specifically to markets, or do you mean broadly to the CIB? Because we compete with non-banks in.
I, I mean, yes. one, just the likes of Citadel Securities leaning into high touch. Can you defend that share, one? Then just more broadly, as we think about even lending, you heard Scott Bessent talked about lending move to private credit. He wants it into banks. Is that happening? Or, yeah.
Sure, that's sort of what I was getting at. I'll separate the two. In markets, I mean, everyone mentions Citadel Securities and Jane Street because they've been incredibly successful. They've done an amazing job. They've grown significantly. I think from the very beginning, we know them very well. We compete with them in some parts of our business, very aggressively with each other. Other parts, we partner, and other parts, they're a real client. We have, like, a long track record of having relationships like that. They happen to be very good. We've always assumed that they would be successful. Without talking about them specifically, I don't think their success or non-bank market makers are really because of regulation.
I think it's electronification of the market, overall change in market structure, the fact that they've done a very good job, the advent of quant trading. You know, we're going to absolutely compete in space. I feel very comfortable that we can hold our own and gain share. They may gain share as well, but it'll arguably, in our view, be at the expense of someone else, and we're prepared to go toe to toe, not specifically with the two of them, but with everyone in the space, including them. I think it's going to be hard for some of the players that are more traditional because they're not going to have the resources to invest in the space. I don't think it's because of regulation.
Just because there's a change in capital rules, it's not going to change our ability or what we have to do to compete with them in that space. We're going to compete, but regulation won't be the driver of that. When it comes to, you know, non-bank lenders, again, I don't think the regulation is going to change enough to dramatically change the playing field, but again, we're competing there. We've been competing, but as Doug said, like, we have a very different business model there. Whereas in market making, we have the same business model. We are market makers, we're competing for the same trades, particularly as, as these non-banks go to higher touch parts of the business. In the lending space, they're lending to get assets. Like, that's their goal. That isn't our goal.
As Doug mentioned, our goal is to have a holistic relationship with our client, and we feel like we're doing a really good job there. We have our own direct lending solution. I mentioned previously in the month that we have deployed almost $14 billion of capital right now there. At the end of last year, that's about where we were. We have over $25 billion of partner capital available. We're in the heart of the ecosystem. We're doing a lot of financing. We're doing a lot of lending. We're not doing it to develop assets. Like, that's not what we do. We're doing it to be in the ecosystem, to create a halo effect with our clients, and create velocity in our portfolios.
We really have a competitive advantage because we have all these ancillary products that we want to do with these clients. The people that are just lending don't. We think both can grow. I know everyone likes to write the article about us fighting with each other, but I think in the most part, there's opportunity for both sides, and we will compete there.
It's exactly why the last question that was just asked about expense management and when, why you would take a break, like we would never take a break for the areas that we're fiercely competing against. We're gonna win. We're all focused on the long-term shareholder value up here. No one has a short-term measure at all for wanting to hit a profit target of any kind. We could, if we wanted to, you could just shut things off in a short term, but that's not how this place is driven, and so you shouldn't expect it to happen, which is exactly why Jeremy's point about how the whole thing works is so important.
All right, Gerard Cassidy on the Zoom, please go ahead.
Can you hear me, Mikael?
Yes, sir.
This is for Mary . Obviously, 2025 was another spectacular year for wealth management, asset management at JPMorgan. two-part question. First, with all the excess capital, does it ever make sense you, you've had great organic growth, of course. Does it ever make sense to do an acquisition in, in your space, in your specific area? Second, can you parse out for us how, how much of the, the bull market or the asset inflation we've all seen over the last two or three years, how has that contributed to the success that you guys have had? Thank you.
Sure. In Asset & Wealth Management, we had, you know, a tremendous year last year, over $550 billion of flows, like Jeremy had mentioned. Very importantly, thanks to Ben and his obsession with the ROE number, we hit a 40% ROE target, and we're well above our targets that we laid out for you of 25% margin, 25% ROE, 4% flows, and 5% revenue growth. We will continue to grow on those. The markets have been very healthy, so that has obviously helped, but our investment performance is the thing that is our North Star, as you always know, and so our investment performance garners new clients as well as more assets in. On the M&A front, it's something we think about every single day.
I think Ben signed a different NDA once every two weeks last year, so there are about 25 of them. Most of the big deals, except for one big one last year, we had seen and turned down for a variety of reasons, didn't fit either culturally, culturally or otherwise. It is something that we are always in the game on. We are always looking, we are always learning. It's a very important part of the muscles that we have here, not just in Asset & Wealth Management, but in each of our businesses. We need to know what's going on. We need to know if it's better to buy or to build, organic or, or, acquisition. So that's what you would expect us to be doing, and that's what we're doing each and every day.
Oh, Erika, go ahead.
This question is for both Marianne and Mary, and follow-up to Mike's question on AI. You know, another part of the market disruption is this concept that AI will disrupt financial advisors, that there'd be no need for financial advisors. I guess I, I would love your just raw response to that, Mary. Marianne, you know, as you think about acquiring client assets through the branch network, is there, you know, a role for AI in terms of helping, you know, customers in the beginning of their investment journey and tax planning journey?
Yes. AI for our bankers in the branches and for our advisors to whom they refer the clients, their sort of advisor tools and wealth planning tools are a critical part of our strategy and have been. It's one of the reasons why we're seeing advisor productivity go up so much, but also while we're seeing, you know, record levels of client satisfaction, too. Using what we know about our customers from their deep, the deep relationships they have with us, being able to deploy that through with AI to the desktop of advisors and the desktop of bankers, has meant that we've been able to deliver twice as many net flows per advisor over the last five years. It's definitely a big part of it, and we're just at the beginning, honestly.
Yeah, I, I would just say, I actually think about, about it very differently. I think that the companies that invest the most in AI, particularly in this space where you need an advisor, not just on the wealth management front, but when you think about our investment bankers, you think about our asset management advisors, when you're talking to the CIOs of different sovereign wealth funds, etc. The more you invest, the more the ecosystem creates a moat for you in the company, because you know more about the client and you know more about the advisor, so that each and every day, when the sell-off happened today, you can know immediately who you should be calling, what you should be.
We talked about it at our operating committee today, what you should be grading if your stock drops, you know, 5% while you're sitting in a meeting, like, how do you be thinking about that? That stuff starts to be highly fine-tuned, but you but not just AI alone. We had a deep dive on an AI question that I had with Dave Frame and his team last week, who runs the global private bank. One of the things that AI will do is it will take what you say to it, and it will take it seriously.
If a client says, "You know, I don't like fixed income," or, "I don't like bonds," and you find that their portfolio just continues to morph into things without fixed income of any kind or any ballast to their portfolio, that's not the right answer, but that's where AI will go. You need the combination of really smart AI and then really smart advisors to say, you need to counteract what it's, what you're feeding the AI in order to give the right advice. It would be the same thing on whether you stay private longer or you go public or all these things like. There's a very intentional way that we are creating our AI systems here in JPMorgan Chase, where we take the best of the models outside, and over cocktails, I think is really important.
You talk to Teresa and Lori, and Derek, and the whole team, because embedding it in what we do takes the decades of experience that we have, fine-tunes it to help our people get smarter, better, faster, cheaper, quicker, all that stuff, and then creates the thought that as a client, the more you know about me, the more you see what my questions are. How could I ever not be with you because somebody else doesn't have all that information and all that history? I think it, again, it just goes to the original question that Mike asked, which is, you're an endgame winner if you are heavily invested in these areas, and you obsess about it every single day, which is like what you would feel if you walked any of the floors right now.
There was a thing in that paper that said, "A relationship business might be dead if the relationship is just a human face to friction." That's not what this is, right? When our customers come in for advice, whether at the beginning of their journey, whether it's later on, whether it's a company, they're coming in to get, real, real advisory and real help, and the human in the loop is definitely still a part of that.
Manan Gosalia, go ahead.
Manan Gosalia, Morgan Stanley. Marianne, can you talk about the international opportunity in your business? You know, how do you size that on both the deposit side and the lending side?
Yeah. I mean, we're at the relatively early stages of the consumer, international consumer expansion, although very excited about it. Remember, we really only launched in the U.K. in 2021, so we're an infant in that context. We're aiming for a multi-country digital bank at the intersection of banking and investing that sort of differentiates on service and value. We have seen really great momentum in the U.K., and so in the U.K., we have 2.8 million customers and $35 billion deposits. Obviously, there are some limitations to how much you can grow in the U.K. if you don't want to become a ring-fence bank, and so we're not at that stage yet. What we're doing is expanding our product offering, deepening into primary relationships and looking for primacy.
We're entering Germany in the second quarter of this year with a savings-led, you know, proposition. We're in the early stages, so we're not declaring this as a goal of, you know, some number of deposits. We're looking for primary relationships. We're looking for, you know, value for our customers and value for us. JPMorgan Personal Investing is also a really important part of that. We bought an asset, we've integrated it, rebranded it, JPMorgan Personal Investing. That's also scaling really nicely at $12.5 billion of assets under management and integrating that with banking, delivering on self-directed, delivering on pensions is a big part of it. We're early, early days right now. Very, very, very good momentum. We're super excited.
There's no one in this company, including Jamie, that is more excited than me about the proposition of having tens of millions of engaged, European or international consumers.
Hundreds millions. Start with tens of millions. We'll get to hundreds of millions.
All right, we'll take one last question before the break. Ken?
Thanks. Marianne, can you talk a little bit, Jeremy mentioned that credit is in good shape?
Yeah.
Expectations are fine, but remain alert.
Right.
Just talk about both sides of the K. I think there's more questions today about the top end of the K than there's even been about the bottom end of the K of late. Just what might be you looking for in the data that could be different than just unemployment rate, and how do you see that, you know, the trends on the top and the bottom evolving? Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, I don't actually know if our risk. We have an entire pack of leading indicators across the board that we look at, but some obvious ones like, you know, payment rate and card, you know, still look in line with expectations. You know, typically, we, you know, when subprime auto was a debate, auto is at the top of the payment hierarchy for consumers. People need their cars, and so, you know, when they default on their cars, you usually see that they've already started defaulting on unsecured credit. We're not seeing any of that. And so early, like, roll rates, early roll rates are steady. Year-over-year, delinquencies are down. Everything looks pretty solid as she goes right now. I can't see any word.
You know, we're, we're, we're not seeing any new trends. On the K- shape, if we look at the bottom end, and I think this is what Jeremy was talking about earlier, we are seeing a continued separation between the sort of higher earners and lower earners, but we're not seeing deterioration at the lower end. We're still seeing everything is, is solid, and nothing is so out of track from pre-pandemic trends as to be concerning. As we sit here today and remember in card, which is the elephant in the room for us, the first six months of next year is already baked.
We shifted our guidance down at the end of last year to, you know, losses of between 3.3% and 3.6%, and we're going to come in at the lower end of that range so far, all things being equal.
All right. Thank you.
We will now take a short break.
Please take your seats. Our program will begin in five minutes.
Please take your seats. Our program is about to begin
Welcome to the stage, Jamie Dimon.
Hello. I can see a bunch of people down here, I didn't realize that. I'm gonna go right to Q&A, folks. I don't have to describe it many times over cocktails. It's arthritis, bone spurs, old injuries that had to get fixed because it was killing me. I hope it worked.
Okay, Mike, you've been very quiet so far, so why don't you go ahead?
We were thinking it was a curling injury. Let's just go right to the big. You have so much excess capital. This is a unique window for you to do a deal, do something different. I know the theme of this conference, or company update is, you know, push the gas for what you've been doing all along. We get it.
Right.
Sometimes, you know, you get opportunities. You have the capital, there's liquidity in the market, you're the number one position, you're expanding in Europe. What about buying a payment firm or a non-U.S. bank, or when you think about your pool of possibilities, what's in that pool?
Yeah. Look, that's a great question because obviously inorganic is very important. I think the most important thing, if you guys are shareholders and represent shareholders, we can grow organically in every business we're in. Organic growth is hard, but it's your way, your culture, your people, your technology. Any merger you do, any one of them, you are talking about consolidating systems and people and back offices and comp schemes and cultures, they, they're hard. I like the fact organic works, I will make a prediction: We can deploy all that $40 billion-$50 billion organically over the next five years. That's what I believe now, I believe that to be true because of SRI. Todd Combs is sitting over here. I hope you guys talked him over cocktails. You know, we said $10 billion of investment.
Well, we could do $20 billion. You know, we should, and the deployment of capital I think, would be much faster at SRI. I think the opportunities in markets and investment banking globally are pretty large. It's very hard when we look at. Mary Callahan Erdoes mentioned that she looks at a lot of stuff. I'd love Mary Callahan Erdoes to buy something if it made sense, but if it doesn't make sense, I see George here and Anton Pil back there. These guys have the ability just to grow and hire people. David Frame can hire people, and Martin Marron, and we like that. Yeah, we'd love to do something with that. Payments, I would look at all the time. We've done several. Some did not work, as you know, but that doesn't mean we wouldn't try again.
In, in commercial banking, investment banking, it, it seems very hard to me that growing ourselves organically wouldn't be better. You're, you're hiring, you're taking on other people's books and other people's systems, and other people's credit, and their loans, and stuff like that, and then they, they didn't mention it, but technology, there are some examples where putting in $30 million into payments technology can have, can create incremental revenues of $60 million-$70 million perpetually. And we're, we're doing that, and that's in those numbers you saw.
Organic growth, I get it.
Yeah.
What's your scorecard to measure your company's success? Using AI or technology? Is it revenues per employee should go up 10%, 20%, 30%? What metrics can we see on the outside, other than just the end result market share, to know that you're spending that $20 billion this year wisely?
Of the $20 billion or AI?
Both. I mean, just generally, what's your scorecard?
AI, you know, I think they all spoke about it. You know, we run 6,000 applications, we never come to you guys and said: "Well, here, we spend another $10 million on the global FX system to create this amount of revenue to justify it." We simply can't do that. Every single thing we do in AI and technology, you know, like in AI, they're NPVs. Some are revenue enhancements, some are cost avoidance, some are risk and fraud. Some, there are some things in Gen AI, we can measure it, we don't give it credit in terms of that because it's, it's too vague. Like, we have an LLM model, 150,000 people use it every week. They think they're saving four hours a day. That's not in an NPV.
We don't see the four hours a day in terms of reduced headcount like that. We look at all of it, and it's deeply embedded in what we do, and that's true for all tech projects. I think the hardest thing to measure has always been tech projects. That's been true my whole life. It's also been true my whole life, that tech is what changes everything. You know, like everything. Going to mainframes, going to servers, going to speed. You know, when I, you know, used to take five days to do a trade in equities and $0.25, and now it's seconds and, you know, not even pennies anymore. That's tech. It's all tech.
Just one, one last one. You know, the AI scare trade, you know, some people think that JPMorgan is going to be a victim. A very cocktail napkin explanation, why is JPMorgan an AI winner, when somebody in the market today, this week, last couple of weeks, thinks that you and the banking industry will be a loser? Thank you.
Yeah. No, look, I, look. In my view, we will be a winner, but, you know, at the end of the day, if you look at 100 areas, we'll be a winner in 75 and maybe a loser in 25. There are some very smart people out there who are cherry-picking very narrow parts of the ecosystem. You know, that could be rent payments, that could be, lower-income accounts, that could be cross-border payments, and they may very well succeed. Doesn't mean we can't do it, and we will try to do it, but I think you might lose in some. In other areas, you know, we've always had the strategy to use technology to do a better job for our customers, and we're quite good at it. Use our technology to do a better job for our customers.
If you look, Mary Ann spoke about it, but she made a list of new products and services over the last 10 years. It's extensive. You know, from wealth management to self-directed investing, to, you know, to early direct deposit, to, you know, better use of debit cards, you know, Zelle, all of Zelle. Zelle didn't exist, I find, seven or eight years ago. Pays, you know, which we're putting a lot of money into today. Very specific stuff, we're investing a lot of money that's solving a lot of the problems people talk about. And, and we're completely prepared to pivot on some of these issues.
All right, Glenn Schorr, go ahead.
Yep, wanted maybe just a quick follow-up on that one. In part of the last handful of weeks, I, I would say there'd be a release, and then everyone runs and says: "Ah, who has that type of exposure and, and trust?" My question is broader than that, and I'll just keep it to JPMorgan, but if you want to opine on the rest of the industry, great. As technology comes and as it changes people's think opinions in certain markets, how do you specifically re-underwrite the loans you have, the assets you own, for new risks that get presented into the market? I, I mean, you're doing that all the time, but I'm curious in, in this age of AI. Then what can you do about it? You have loans on your books, you have customers.
I'm just curious on how you adapt your, your exposures.
So I should point out, if you take credit, and this has been true for most credit cycles, there's always a surprise in a credit cycle. And, you know, even if a credit cycle is normal, so when you have a recession, you have, you know, a rise in credit losses, the surprise has often been which industry. You didn't expect newspapers in, in 2000, Warren Buffett businesses. You didn't expect utilities and phone companies in 2008 and 2009. This time around, it might be software because of AI. That, we've always talked about there's a moving tectonic plates underneath that cause an industry to be challenged. You'd be shocked about what these guys have already been through on software.
Loan by loan, name by name, customer by customer, to look at what it means for us, what happens if they were downgraded, and what happens to their ecosystems and things like that. They're trying to forecast it forward. We are completely comfortable. We may get caught a little bit in that, too. We're not immune from missing the industry, but it isn't, it wouldn't be enough to change our credit losses that much. I mean, it will be part of that curve. I agree with what Troy and Doug said about the credit cycle. I'll just add one other thing. You got to look at the credit cycle is if when it turns, and it will turn, that's when people will be surprised more.
About what industry, what types of credits, and also, in my experience, it's always been people who do a bad job at it and people do a good job at it. You know, that's what people are trying to guess today, and I'm not sure you can actually see it in today's numbers.
Ebrahim, go ahead.
Sticking with AI, I think at Davos, you talked about maybe the gov, policymakers to think about banning layoffs due to AI. Given just your sort of lens with which you're seeing the adoption of AI, just talked about, about, if you, we think about two or three years from now, do you see the risk of high job losses that the governments of the United States and the rest of the world need to be prepared for and address, or do you think the risk is overstated?
I didn't, I wasn't about banning layoffs. First of all, for us, we are going to deploy AI as best we can to do a better job for our customers. That's what we are going to do. We're not gonna put our head in the sand. We're gonna do it at a very detailed level. We're gonna do it bottoms up, we're gonna do it top down. It's really incremental type of things. We already have huge redeployment plans for own people. In fact, we spoke about it today, and we have to up that a little bit, so we can take people who are displaced, and we have displaced people from AI, and we offered them other jobs. They are usually well-trained and highly talented, very good at things, and so we're gonna do it ourselves.
What I was mentioning when I was asked that question in Davos, this is now public policy. This is not JPMorgan I'm talking about. This is what and I gave a specific example. What if, I think there are 2 million commercial truckers in the United States, and there are lots of other examples you can give. There's a thought exercise, and you could push a button, eliminate all of them, and they make $120,000 on average. Save fuel, save lives, save time, a more efficient system, less disrupted highways, all that beautiful stuff. Would you do it if you put 2 million people on the street where even if there are jobs available, that next job is $25,000 a year, stocking shelves.
I was saying, "That's kind of really bad, kind of civilly, should we as society agree to that?" I don't think so. I was talking about the business and government, and they should start thinking today, not when it happens, what would we do to deal with the issue? It's got to be business and government. I would give you an example in that case, maybe you phase it in over five, five years. During that five years, you have time to retire people, income assistance, relocate, retrain, but you have to have systems that actually work. We actually had a thing called Trade Adjustment Assistance that was put in place, I think, when Clinton was president, and it didn't work. You know, society's got to think through what it wants to do if this becomes that kind of problem.
I'm not predicting it's gonna be a problem. I'm simply saying now is the time to start thinking about what you do if it does.
I ask that just because from a bank's perspective, even today, the concern was if there are mass layoffs due to AI, does it become credit card defaults, auto defaults as white-collar job losses? I'm wondering if that conversation is happening today or not between businesses and policymakers.
No, the conversation not really happens today. It's just more fear and things like that. I do think, you know, ultimately, AI will create more productivity, but it could create another derivative effects, like you just said. Absolutely. Laying those people off will cause a problem, even if it created more productivity in society. That's why society has got to think this through a little bit. It may happen faster than we can adjust to it. Like, you know, it took years for farms to, you know, adopt tractors and fertilizers. It took years for electricity to be put into cities. This may happen faster. Therefore, we should be prepared. You know, you guys, you know, you're all smart, write what you think the policy should be. Don't just ask.
All right, well, you can ask questions today.
That's it?
Mike Mayo, go ahead.
What do you think about the competitive environment today versus other periods? I mean, you, you highlighted, or Jeremy's slide has, this is the most competitive period since before the Global Financial Crisis, and you know as well as anybody, this is when stupid things are done.
Yeah.
Right? You have foreign banks that are back, you have all the regional banks are back after the problems in 2023. Everybody's front-footed, everyone's playing offense, and now you have to compete against these same players just by spending more, hopefully, in your mind, getting more market share. I mean, how do you think about this-
Yeah
competitive world?
Unfortunately, we did see this in 2005, in 2006, in 2007. Almost the same thing. The rising tide lifts in all boats. Everyone was making a lot of money. People were leveraging to the hilt. The sky was the limit. Yeah, I think you're absolutely correct. I think today, the rising tide is lifting all boats. My own view is people are getting a little comfortable that this is real, you know, these high asset prices and high volumes, and, you know, that we won't have any kind of problem whatsoever. We're quite cautious about that. We stick to our own rules. You, you know, if we have to-- these guys lose business 'cause we don't want to underwrite a leverage loan, so be it. We're not chasing anything. We will not do stuff the wrong way for the wrong reason.
I would say competition today is, is tougher than that. All of our main competitors are back in the United States and Europe. The Japanese are back here. I mean, everyone's back. I think that's good. It's good for the world, etc. You know, I don't know how long it's gonna be great for everybody. I see a couple of people doing some dumb things. You know, they're just doing dumb things to create NII or, or say they're, you know, winning in the markets business, something like that. The competition is much more than that today. I mean, it is tons of payments companies. It's Chime and Revolut and PayPal, Stripe and Built and Ramp and, it's, you know, automated companies. It's, it's everywhere.
It's, and, and even the tech sides from all the other, you know, the traditional banks, some are doing a great job. In fact, we've got our asses kicked in certain parts, which I won't go through, and I won't give names. You know, we got beat. Beat badly. You know, so we should be very conscious of that. Does it mean, you know, we're still gonna win it big time. You know, we're gonna every now and then strike out, but, but it, it's, it's a lot. Then when we do a lot of this investing we're talking about, you know, we have to do something to put $30 million into a tech thing to do a better job on a client, you know, starters or something like that, we're gonna do it.
Then we, you know, we, we try to be very disciplined about it, but we have to compete at that level, too. We can't just put our heads in the sand and say: Well, that doesn't affect us. That's what we said with Stripe when it came out. That's what we said with PayPal. That's what we said with Cash. Okay, we're not gonna do that.
One follow-up, just philosophically, I mean, this has been described as a commoditized industry for decades, and I thought the three most important words I heard today, just reiterating- it's not just price.
Yeah.
I think, Mary, you said that. I think that, I think that's your theme throughout the firm. When you say it's not just price, and this goes back to the AI argument, like the excess profits, you know, the intermediation fees will all be going down to zero, and why should people pay that, and JPMorgan make money from that? Describe what you guys mean when you say it's not just price in ways that I could explain to somebody who's not in the business. Thank you.
Yeah, there are, you know, there are certain things which are completely commoditized, but it's not just price. Just take an FX trade. You know, if you don't, kind of give the best price at that split second, you will lose the trade. You know, we have to build the system to do a better job for you. We can create more global flows that actually create the better price. We have research and, you know, all these other things that we do that make our F. And we'll spend the money and the technology just for that trading desk to create it. Marianne said it, like, take trust and advice. We treat your data well. We, we don't-- we want to charge you fairly. We, if you're, if you're sending your data outside, there's been a big point of ours about open banking.
We want them to use your data properly. We don't think you will-- How many of you use some outside services for your payments? They're taking all your transaction data, all your card data, all your. There's a liability shift. We want you to know about it, and I want you to be able to go on the screen and decide what you give them, how you give them, when you give them, what the durations we give them. We are a trusted advisor to people. You know, if you have, if you're a private, I'm sure some of you might be private bank clients, you trust our advisor to do the right thing in the right way.
If we make an error, we're the first people to say, "We're sorry, and we owe you." We build the best fraud systems, the best scam systems, the best, all the things that, and we want to be paid for it. You know, one of, you know, one of the things about, you know, banking, and I've told you for years, the cost of, just giving you a checking account is, like, $200 fixed a year. When I hear people say, you know, deposits are free, deposits aren't free. Well, that, it, that's how you get paid for the $200 a year of a fixed cost. There's the same dynamics in credit card.
You know, it's called APR, but just to give you the account, to do the credit, to, you know, to give you access to, you know, daily payment systems, to balance out your, your payments, has a cost. Building the best. Then taking our businesses, this is a generalization, in the wholesale businesses, you are generally paid by the task or the, or the, the product or the service, okay? You have to compete at that level. At the end of the day, these clients, when they call us up on a, you know, on a Friday night, and they want a $20 billion bridge loan to do something like EA, you know, they get hundreds of people working around the clock for them. That's what they want. It wasn't just the best price.
In fact, we had a client on stage at our senior leaders thing saying about, "One thing I learned about how we should treat a JPMorgan, it's not the basis points. It's what you do for us day in and day out, year in and year out." We're also there for them in good times and bad times. Remember, we did not fail in 2008 and 2009. We bailed out a lot of companies, in fact, almost a few countries, if you look at it. So we, you know, we're, we're, we're really good. We're trustworthy, we're honest, we're decent, we're great citizens in communities, and people like that, too.
Obviously, in the wholesale, so they, you know, you get paid by the trade or by the ticket or by the M&A fee or something like that, which is very episodic, but it's not necessarily bad. In the consumer business, it's actually a packaged product. When you have a consumer account, you get the debit card for free, you get this for free, you get ATM for free, you get branches for free, you get wealth management for free, you get SDI for free, you get all these things for free as part of that. You know, it's a bucket of beautiful things we're giving you, and then we're gonna, and then we only can do, we're gonna do a better job. Take SDI. I know Chris is in the room.
We're gonna give you order flow, so when you pay, when you use our self-directed investing, we're gonna run it through JPMorgan's institutional systems and, and give you the, the best price, probably in the world, with no markup, which is not what payment order flow is. It's not the best price in the world, and you get a markup. So we're gonna give you the best, and we're gonna put it up on a screen, and we're gonna show you the execution, the cost, the speed, and that may mean something to people. It means something to me because it would seem to be forthright.
All right, Manan, go ahead.
Jamie, with changes coming at the head of the Fed, there's talk about another round of QT. How do you expect QT will impact JPM and maybe also the broader banking system?
Yeah. First, I loved Al and Jeremy's alphabet soup. Very good compliment to my spaghetti chart, they were brave enough to do it. Okay, they're out of Stockholm, they're out of jail at this point. First of all, I'm surprised that they're calling it not QE. They'll do another $40 billion a month. They're doing that because they recognize, Jeremy mentioned, that when we have to hold $1 trillion of cash and marketable securities unencumbered, which cannot be used to facilitate transactions in the marketplace, which are basically risk-free, that if they don't provide the reserves in the marketplace, there will be a problem like we had in February 2023 and February 2019 and February 2018. It's just so predictable, it will happen again, I think they recognize that. QE does affect.
You know, it's sometimes hard to exactly measure how it affects. Like, if you do a lot of QE, does it show up in wholesale? Does it show up in consumer? Does it show up. All our analysis shows it first shows up in wholesale, then leaks into consumer. It takes over time and things like that. Whatever it is, we'll deal with. When, JPMorgan is not sitting here saying whether they do it or don't do it or whatever, they're in the Fed, is gonna change how we serve a client. We will serve a client, we'll get our returns, we'll do okay. That, to me, is adjusting the financial architecture of the company, so we can serve you properly. It may change how we price certain things and stuff like that. I think they're right to talk about more narrow banking.
I think that the balance sheet of the Fed is too big. They've lost $1 trillion. They did err into DEI, climate, social policy. I think that, I think it also took their eye off the ball on, you know, interest rate exposure, which is what happened at Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic. It was interest rate exposure, and it was too much HTM securities. He mentioned we have almost $500 billion that we, that we have collateral posted to the Fed every day, that we can go if we had to do it. We do that, so we're a sound, secure bank, that you will never have to question this.
A lot of those banks didn't do it 'cause it costs money, and, you know, I would question whether obviously it was the wrong decision on their part. I think we'll be okay, and I, if I remember correctly, Kevin Warsh came out and said that it'll take a year for them to do the work and the study to tell us how they're gonna change those policies. I don't think they're gonna do anything that's, like, unwise and too quick, that's gonna cause a lot of commotion. If they reduce the size of the balance sheet of the Fed, they have to change those rules. They cannot reduce the balance sheet of the Fed and not change LCR and liquidity rules. I could show you numbers they cannot do without changing those rules.
To me, I'm writing about this in my chairman's letter, I believe that we can create a safer system, capital, that the capital is not an issue almost anywhere, that creates more capital to be used, more loans deployed, more liquidity deployed, that's actually safer than what we have today. By changing, you know, post-failure rule, rules pre-failure, at point of failure, and after failure, in a way that you don't have to worry about if the bank fails. I think that could be done. I, I hope they put their best brains to work, that that's what they come up with. Well, I can come up with a lot of ways to do it right now. In fact, I wish the banks would just fund all these problems because we end up paying in a really bad way when it goes to the FDIC.
Okay, we have a question on the Zoom. Gerard Cassidy, please go ahead and unmute yourself.
Thank you, Mikael. Jamie, the outlook that you have described today and your colleagues is quite positive for JPMorgan as well as the industry. You know, at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, can you tell us, you know, when you look around corners, what are you looking for in terms of risks that could be out there that are not apparent to us today? Thank you.
Yeah, well, you know, I'm not. I think if you listen closely what they said, pipelines are like accordions, everything, the rising tide lifts in all boats. I'm not quite that optimistic about the year. Okay, we know, and Jeremy had the chart up there, that there are all these tailwinds, you know, the one big beautiful bill, bank deregulation, other deregulation, animal spirits, faster permitting. I think some of this stuff is being spent. I think it's all gonna drive growth this year. Our economists say it, we all say it. It may have slight inflationary effect. At the bottom of this chart, in geopolitics, global deficits, trade issues, remilitarization of the world, those are longer term things that may affect the economy, but they could be harsh.
If you read history books, you know, there are a lot of examples where, you know, you get surprised. We don't run the company hoping for good times. We don't run the company just thinking there are bad times. We run the company with a full range of possible outcomes, so that regardless of the outcome, we can serve our clients day in and day out. We are adults. If our ROE goes to 10% next year under one of the scenarios, we are completely fine. It will make no difference to the future of JPMorgan Chase. In fact, I would tell our people, I've said before, if and when that happens, our opportunity will be bigger. To, you know, as Mike says, to buy something or deploy capital other people can't, or something like that. There, there will be a cycle one day.
I don't know when there's gonna be a cycle. I don't know what confluence of events will cause that cycle. My anxiety is high over it. I'm not assuaged by the fact that asset prices are high. In fact, I think that adds to the risk, and that was on your chart, too. You know, you, you feel stupid when everyone's coining money, and everyone's great, and everyone's talking about what wonderful thing it's gonna be. You feel stupid that I feel the same way. It really does feel really good. Then, when I think about all the factors taking place, I'd like to take a deep breath and say: Watch out.
All right, John McDonald, go ahead.
Hi, Jamie. Just wanna ask a general question and then a specific one. Generally, two of the other large banks or a few of the other large banks are considering combining the chairman and CEO role, just get your perspective on why that's a good arrangement at a large financial institution. Then second, if you could comment a little bit on succession planning, your timeline. Obviously, you continue to come in with a lot of energy and enjoy the job, and how that lines up with the succession plan.
I'll do that first 'cause it's the easiest. I think I was told to say this very specifically. I forgot, what word am I? I'm here for a few years as CEO. Maybe a few after that as executive chairman or chairman, pending whatever the board wants to do. Whatever makes sense for the company, that's what it is. Okay? Did I say that right? I'm, I've never been for or against chairman and CEO. That's why you have a board to decide how you properly structure a company. There are times they should be separate, there are times they should be combined. It is almost a non-issue. Is Steve Burke here, who's our lead director, or maybe he's in the Zoom.
You know, if you look at the authorities in the proxy of the lead director, okay, they have all the authority of what you would call a chairman. setting the agenda, calling meetings. I think the most important thing, which I've been trying to tell the Financial Times, who can never get this straight, they're obsessed with this issue in the U.K., it's that isn't the important thing. The important thing is, does the board have an open, honest conversation? You know, not, and not just with the CEO, with the management team, every time they meet. Dodd-Frank mandated that the board have to meet without the CEO once a year. When I got to Bank One, I asked my board, and I was chairman and CEO, to meet with me every meeting, without me every meeting.
Every meet, so every single meeting since the year 2000, my board meets without me in the room. Sometimes it's for 15 minutes, sometimes it's for two hours. Very often, they call me up afterwards with a little bit of help, advice, coaching, things they might be worried about, things they want to think about. Because I'm just trying to do the right job, and I know that if I'm in the room, it may be harder for them to have that conversation. I think things like that, which are not structural in chairman and CEO split, but are so much more important. Like, that is the type of stuff you should be asking about. How does the place function? They also have total and complete access to.
They know, I mean, all the management team in this room, they know all of them, but they really know the people up on stage and a bunch of the folks in this room, like, that you just saw presenting, and Jen, who's here, and Robin and Jeremy, and they know all of them. They have lunch with them. They see them. They present. I have never made a presentation, that I can remember, at the JPMorgan board of directors, ever. These folks do it. You know, I usually let them do it, and I may every now and then raise my hand and add, particularly when Jeremy says something which, when he starts digging those rabbit holes, I'm like, "Okay, let's, you're gonna scare them, Jeremy, Jeremy." I think those are the most important things: total access, total openness.
They feel like they're totally briefed, they know what's going on, and most of us are just trying to do the best we can.
All right, do we have a last question? Yes, we have one from Steven Chubak.
Jamie, you proposed some recommendations on the regulatory side. GSIB surcharge was not one of those areas that was covered, and was hoping to get your perspective on what you think the Fed should consider in terms of changes to ensure that U.S. banks are in fact on a level playing field.
They should do it the same way the Europeans do it. It, it's, what they allowed was unethical and wrong. They were supposed to adjust GSIB from the beginning to the size of the global system and inflation, all that stuff like that, and they did not. They should just go back to that. They shouldn't have American gold plating. They should get rid of all that crap and just do it. Even if they did all that, I mean, it would change the numbers, and I forgot how much, you know, 2% or something. They, they should do the numbers the right way. That's all we've been telling them for years. Do the numbers the right way. Stop playing games with artificial targets, and we're just about right. Show it! I mean, you know, I've spoke for years that CCAR's not right.
It is a dishonest disclosure of what our loss would be under things, under a scenario like that. You know, I have to then go tell the shareholders, "It's wrong," you know? They should say it, that, you know, this doesn't remotely resemble reality. That's what they should do. If they wanted to add, you know, say, we want to be more conservative than the rest of the world, they can add something, but they should do the numbers the right way. I think they might, you know, we'll see. Folks, thanks for spending time with us. We have cocktails.
That way? This floor.
This floor. On this floor, that way. Folks, thank you very much. Appreciate it.
Thank you for attending JPMorgan Chase's 2026 company update. We will now conclude the evening with cocktail hour. Please make your way out of the presentation room and down to the 16th-floor balcony. Our event staff will be happy to help direct you.