or more than 200 years, JP Morgan Private Bankers have been working with innovators, entrepreneurs and industry leaders and their families to help them achieve their unique ambitions and make a difference. JP Morgan offers a meaningful, tailored advice for today, tomorrow and future generations. Like any other complete private bank, in terms of the customer value proposition (CVP), JP Morgan Private Bank offers all services offered by private banks. The product range and services include planning, investing, lending and banking all in one place.
A quick glance at the JP Morgan Private Bank website will get you noticing that JP Morgan announce themselves as advisors, strategists, investors, big thinkers and detail fanatics and each one of these is dedicated to working with clients, one-on-one. Throughout the customer journey, clients are assisted in defining, refining, and achieving the goals they set for life, family, community and the world. This spans from organising money to financial goal-setting, introducing unique investment opportunities, handling taxes effectively or arranging trusts and planning the estate.
JP Morgan was recently awarded the 2021 Best Private Bank in the World by Euromoney, a leading publication covering the world’s banking and financial markets. In awarding JP Morgan the accolade, Euromoney stated that not only did JP Morgan come into the COVID-19 crisis with a strong balance sheet but, as in 2008, the bank had shown that its diverse businesses provide plentiful earnings to take big reserves even while it keeps financing large corporates and small businesses alike. Deposits have flooded in, technology investments have proved their worth and it is winning more business from mid-cap clients inside and outside the US. JP Morgan is currently the largest in terms of Assets Under Management (AUM) that are estimated to be around USD2,7 trillion. Besides the Euromoney award, JP Morgan won two of Global Finance magazine’s prestigious awards for 2021, Best Private Bank in the World (for the second year in a row) and Best Private Bank in North America.
This is by no means accidental because the same brand has won numerous accolades over years. The question then is what makes J P Morgan a stand out? Several banking gurus, among them CEOs of competitor banks, have noted the fact that the most important difference between JP Morgan and other investment banks is that they managed to merge commercial banking and investment banking in a way that made sense. This is because JP Morgan is a merger of different companies and due to this vastly different personality types and corporate cultures mixing were achieved. The other difference is that because JP Morgan Chase was never a standalone bank in the way that competitors like Goldman-Sachs are, you have wildly different corporate cultures mixing, which can be both good and bad. Something that Goldman-Sachs does is that it tends to recruit a certain type of personality, and once you get in the firm tries to mould you into that personality type. With JP Morgan, it is different – a merger of different companies created vastly different personality types and corporate cultures, and this has worked in their favour.
The other success factor is that being a strong brand with a great reputation and unrivalled goodwill, the firm attracts only the best in the world who all want to be a part of JP Morgan. The bank attracts only outstanding, smart, talented and hardworking people. However, that is still not enough. JP Morgan is extremely selective about who it hires. The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has announced that the bank boasts nearly 250,000 “top notch” employees in investment banking, sales, trading and general management and recruits from some of the “best schools in the world”. A former employee wrote in an opinion blog qualified the statement by Dimon by stating that he had to go through 11 different interviews for an analyst position.
In terms of operational risk management, JP Morgan is probably the best in the industry too. They are very thorough and take this aspect as seriously as the aviation or aeronautics industry does. Although mistakes cannot be completely prevented, once someone makes a mistake, they all make sure that it doesn’t happen again. JP Morgan’s focus on control is outstanding and the bank is a fail-safe environment where hiding mistakes is not allowed. People are actually allowed to make mistakes and most of the time they won’t let such people go. Their philosophy is that the person who made a mistake and cost money learned the lesson better than anyone and they already paid their training anyway (cost of the mistake).
The most important factor of all is definitely the customer experience side of things. For JP Morgan, every customer is equally important and profitability or the Net Asset Value of a client is not used to determine the importance of the client to the bank. The bankers are always there for their clients. They are very customer-centric, and that includes internal clients as well.
Every year, many awards recognise JP Morgan Private Bank globally and regionally. Here are a few of the global awards they received in 2020:
- Best Private Bank in the World (Global Finance)
- Best Bank in the World (Euromoney)
- Best Private Bank – North America (The Digital Banker)
- Best Global Private Bank – Asia (The Digital Banker)
- Best Digital Client Communication (The Digital Banker)
- Best Private Bank for Client Experience (The Digital Banker)
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