Chase Passes 22M Active Mobile Customer Mark

JPMorgan Chase’s third-quarter earnings were a mixed bag, but on the mobile side the banking giant continues to lead.

While most of the headlines about yesterday’s earnings were, of course, focused on the financials, one of the major growth points for Chase’s banking side was its active mobile banking customer base. Chase has continued to grow this figure every quarter by more than 20 percent and Q3 results showed the same momentum.

Third-quarter results showed that Chase’s active mobile banking customer base has surpassed 22 million active mobile customers, which was a 21-percent increase. Chase’s Q2 figures showed 21 million mobile customers, which was a 22-percent increase.

During JPMorgan’s earnings call, CFO Marianne Lake emphasized that Chase’s digital banking is a strong focus for the company — particularly as it continues to shrink its physical footprint in some markets and continues to trim expenses through relying more on technology and less on people to run the bank’s services.

“You have to have the right footprint,” Dimon said about the company’s strategy in Q2. “We’re not getting smaller because we’re guessing. We’re getting smaller because there’s less of a need for operations in branches now. People are doing far more on mobile phones. So we actually do it city by city.”

Lake noted during the earnings call that Chase has cut its workforce by about 10,000 jobs in 2015, but gave no indication about future cutbacks.

When asked about Chase’s market share for mobile banking, it appeared the vision for Chase’s digital footprint has continued. Lake spoke toward Chase’s deposit rates as showing its strength in digital banking products.

“I can tell you that we are growing our deposits at nearly five times the industry, so I think that’s a reasonable indication for a bunch of different reasons that we have a very highly rated app,” Lake said.

Moving back toward earning figures, JPMorgan saw a revenue dip of 6 percent to $23.5 billion. Net income rose 22 percent to $6.8 billion. Overall, earnings missed analysts’ expectations. This came during a quarter when the bank cut costs by 2.7 percent to $15.4 billion, but revenue was still down on those changes.

“We had decent results this quarter. We saw the impact of a challenging global environment and continued low rates reflected in the wholesale businesses’ results, while the consumer businesses benefited from favorable trends and credit quality. Overall, our risk management discipline and diversified platforms across the businesses are serving us well,” Dimon said in a prepared earnings release. “We continue to focus on our commitments, optimize our balance sheet and manage our expenses. We are also building the businesses for the future, dedicating resources to controls, cybersecurity and technology.”

“Our position of strength allows us to make significant investments to transform the businesses we operate, deliver better experiences to our customers and clients, gain share and be positioned to be a long-term winner,” he added.

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