JPMorgan Hires in Germany to Expand Retail Banking

JPMorgan will hire a team of retail bankers in Germany, as it looks at expanding its international consumer business and seek steadier revenue streams, Reuters wrote Monday (Sept. 5).

The first foray the bank has made outside the U.S. was when it entered the British market with a digital-only retail offering last year.

Executives said they wanted to expand to more countries. JPMorgan is looking at the success of the rollout before it decides where it’ll add more such business.

In Germany, the hires could be used across various locales, according to anonymous sources. The bank posted a job for “people project lead” in international consumer banking, which described a “start-up atmosphere.” The company is reportedly looking into hiring a financial crime compliance officer “for the international consumer expansion in Germany.”

It comes as U.S. banks have been looking at offsetting the lucrative if volatile returns in investment banking with steadier revenues, through expanding operations. Banks have been seeing a downturn in corporate dealmaking. Now they may also see their retail operations struggling.

The digital era has changed things for big banks like JPMorgan, where CEO Jamie Dimon said  in May that it would be a “battle” to reach success outside the home market.

The bank, like many others, has also wrestled with questions of how to deal with digital assets.

Umar Farooq, CEO of Onyx by JPMorgan, has said crypto has a “long way to go” as a competitor with traditional finance, but it’s also too disruptive to be ignored, PYMNTS wrote.

Read more: JPMorgan’s Farooq: Banks Will Win Coming Crypto Asset Cycle

The regulatory infrastructure isn’t in place yet, which is slowing the financial industry down.

“If you think about deposits, tokenized deposits do not exist in the world right now” as a result, Farooq said.

But he said there weren’t many use cases yet.

“Most of crypto is still junk, actually … with the exception of, I would say, a few dozen tokens,” he said.