JPMorgan is battling to beat fintechs at their own game

JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon speaks during the Business Roundtable CEO Innovation Summit in Washington, DC on December 6, 2018. — Jamie Dimon has been CEO of JPMorgan since 2005.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

JPMorgan, headed up by CEO Jamie Dimon since 2005, is the biggest US bank by assets.
Dimon has said the bank will spend as necessary to compete with threats like buy now, pay later.
The bank has also been on a spree of buying and partnering with fintechs.
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JPMorgan is the biggest US bank by assets and a bellwether for the global financial system - so when the firm's senior leaders talk, Wall Street pays attention.

On the bank's third-quarter earnings call in October, analysts asked leaders how JPMorgan was responding to the threat posed by fintechs and buy now, pay later players like Affirm and Klarna. CEO Jamie Dimon said the firm would spend "whatever it takes" to beat the competition, adding that as companies expand beyond just BNPL into other offerings like debit cards, they become even more of a threat.

"These are all different forms of competition which we have to respond to," Dimon said.

It's not the first time Dimon has sounded an alarm on the threat fintechs pose to traditional Wall Street banks. During JPMorgan's year-end earnings call in January, Dimon said that the firm should be "s cared shitless" about the growth in fintech.

"I expect there to be very tough, brutal competition in the next 10 years," Dimon said in January. "I expect to win. So help me, God."

The bank has taken steps in this direction through several consumer-facing acquisitions so far in 2021. That buying spree included a deal for The Infatuation, a restaurant-review website that owns Zagat, which will be incorporated into the bank's cards-rewards business. And JPMorgan has a $12 billion annual budget for internal tech development.

Inside JPMorgan's masssive tech org

Lori Beer JPMorgan Chase — **Lori Beer, JPMorgan's global chief information officer**
**Eric Kayne/AP Images for JPMorgan Chase & Co.**

JPMorgan has a $12 billion annual tech budget, employs 53,000 technologists, and houses 500 petabytes of data. Underpinning all of that is Lori Beer, JPMorgan's global chief information officer, and her team of top tech brass.

Beer joined JPMorgan in 2014 as the CIO of corporate and investment banking. In 2017 she was named global CIO and joined the bank's operating committee, reporting directly to Jamie Dimon, the CEO and chairman.

Insider mapped out the key tech executives at JPMorgan who report to Beer and help her lead the bank's massive tech org. Many on her team are focused on specific business lines. There are chief information officers appointed to divisions like corporate and investment banking, asset and wealth management, and consumer and community banking. Some executives work across the bank, focusing on areas like employee experience and technology architecture.

Keep reading:

How JPMorgan organizes its massive tech org: Global CIO Lori Beer's 8 key execs helping her manage the firm's $12 billion tech budget.

A leadership reshuffle puts Allison Beer in the spotlight.

JPMorgan announced in September that Alison Beer would take over as CEO of cards for Chase, its consumer-banking division. She's the third woman in a row to run the bank's cards business, and she stepped into the role after Marianne Lake was promoted this spring to co-lead the firm's massive consumer and community banking business alongside Jennifer Piepszak.

Most recently, Beer was Chase's chief product officer, and she's held multiple roles since joining the firm in 2017: head of customer experience and digital; head of corporate development for banking and payments; and head of payments partnerships for Chase digital.

Her promotion comes after months of leadership reshuffling at the firm, which kicked off with the promotion of Lake and Piepszak this spring. The pair took over running CCB from Gordon Smith, who is retiring at the end of the year from his roles as co-president and co-chief operating officer of the firm and CEO of CCB, leaving Dan Pinto to be JPMorgan's sole president and COO.

All had been rumored to be potential CEO successors to Dimon, who at 65 is Wall Street's longest-serving CEO of a big bank. JPMorgan this summer granted Dimon a big stock award that pays off as the firm's shares rise, and he has to stay around five more years to collect it. Dimon's long-term stewardship, management-succession planning, and JPMorgan's strong performance since 2005 were some of the factors considered in granting the award, the bank said in a filing.

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