JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon: North Carolina has been "a great place for us"
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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, left, and CEO of Business Banking, Ben Walter, right, in Raleigh on Friday, Aug. 1. Photo: Katie Peralta Soloff/Axios
It's been roughly six years since JPMorgan Chase entered the North Carolina market with a branch on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. In the years since, the country's biggest bank has been expanding rapidly throughout the state.
Why it matters: North Carolina is rife with opportunities for JPMorgan Chase, thanks to its fast-growing population, talent base, regulatory environment and small business ecosystem, bank executives told reporters Friday.
- They see ample room for growth here despite the presence of established financial institutions like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Truist, First Citizens Bank and North State Bank.
- The plan is to open 500 new branches nationwide by early 2027.
Driving the news: CEO Jamie Dimon, who's helmed the bank for nearly two decades, was in Raleigh on Friday — at the bank's private banking arm in North Hills, which opened in the spring — as part of a regional bus tour.
- This week, bank executives in Charlotte celebrated the opening of JPMorgan Chase's 1,000th branch.
Zoom in: One of the most powerful CEOs on Wall Street, Dimon, who's outspoken on macroeconomic and political issues, discussed a range of topics Friday, including AI, tariffs and his morning reading routine. His responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
How bullish are you on the Triangle now that it's been a few years?
Very. The Triangle is one of the fastest-growing, most innovative parts of the country. It's cool. It's the people, the companies, the technology, the parks. ... North Carolina has been a great place for us.
Once we're in the state, we can bank your hospitals, your schools, your cities, your state, your affordable housing initiatives.
What role does AI play at JPMorgan?
We have 2,000 people working on AI, and we've been doing it for the better part of 14 years. We have an AI research department that we started around seven years ago, with 200 people in it doing things like natural language processing, synthetic data, generative AI.
AI will affect every job. It will cause some jobs to go away. That's a given. But we retrain people, we deploy people, and it's all going to be used to do a better job with clients.
What do you make of President Trump's latest decision on tariffs? Most are now due to take effect Aug. 7.
It does create uncertainty. It'll probably create a little inflation. Will it change the direction of the economy? I do not know. And if I called up all of our clients and surveyed them, you'd hear exactly the same thing. Some would say it doesn't matter. Some say it matters. Some will pass on the cost. Some won't. We just have to wait and see how it plays out.
How has the student loan repayment start affected household finances, and how does that play into other areas like housing?
It'll reduce home-buying affordability for a bunch of people. You also have to look at student lending. It's like $1.56 trillion and the really bad part was people who didn't finish for-profit schools. You really have to question why we'd be forgiving (those loans). There are people who went to college, got degrees, and now earn twice as much as those who didn't go to college. We should forgive those who should be forgiven, not everybody, and then fix the program.
This has been a terrible boondoggle, and it has put people in a very bad position. Universities took all this money. ... And the cost of education went up and up and up.
What's the first thing you read when you wake up in the morning?
I flip through the New York Post. I read The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times. I always read Axios. And research reports. I read for hours every morning, no matter where I am.