“Signature bites.” Free umbrellas. Library rooms instead of teller windows.
These are among the features of a new “financial center” branch concept JPMorgan Chase (JPM) is rolling out in New York City and San Francisco on Wednesday, part of a larger strategy to reach a new band of wealthy customers known as the “mass affluent.”
The two locations are the first of 30 such financial centers JPMorgan plans to open across the country between now and the end of 2026 — with other locations coming in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois and Texas.
The goal of these centers is to attract customers with more than $750,000 in deposits and assets, the starting point for the so-called “mass affluent” segment that the bank hopes to serve via a new offering known as J.P. Morgan Private Client.
Once they arrive, these customers won’t see rows of teller windows that are familiar fixtures at many of JPMorgan’s 4,900 other US branches.
Instead there will be an associate banker acting as a greeter at the door, “library” sitting rooms with couches, and a lot of meeting spaces where a “concierge” banker assigned to each client can assist with everything from buying stocks and retirement planning to refinancing a business loan or responding to credit card fraud.
There are other perks, too. J.P. Morgan Private Client customers can get free JPMorgan branded umbrellas, coffee made to order and so-called “signature bites” supplied by a different JPMorgan client each quarter.
The 9,000-square-foot New York City location will start with chocolates supplied by Dylan’s Candy Bar, the boutique candy store chain founded by Dylan Lauren. Dylan Lauren is the daughter of designer Ralph Lauren.
JPMorgan is aiming for an experience that is as much about hospitality as banking, Jennifer Roberts, JPMorgan’s head of consumer banking, said in an interview.
“You can kind of think of it like a really great restaurant you visit all the time,” she said. “They know your usual drink of choice, what you like in your coffee.”
The two locations are renovated spaces formerly belonging to First Republic, the San Francisco bank that JPMorgan purchased in 2023 after it was seized by US regulators. The spaces also borrow ideas from that bank, which was known for catering to wealthy clients. That includes the concierge-style approach, the snacks and even the umbrella.
First Republic clients prized their complimentary forest-green umbrella adorned with an eagle logo. The JPMorgan umbrellas will be brown, with white JPMorgan lettering.
This is not the bank’s first attempt to reach wealthier customers. In fact, JPMorgan has a unit known as “J.P. Morgan Private Bank” that keeps physical locations across the US and in other countries designed to cater to clients with more than $10 million in assets.
And all of its retail branches across the country have at least some space set aside for wealth management clients.
The hope with these new centers is to deliver “a private bank level of experience to a larger portion of the population,” said Roberts, JPMorgan Chase’s head of consumer banking.
JPMorgan currently serves roughly 7 million such customers, but they keep less than 10% of their total deposits and assets with JPMorgan.
“We know we have a long way to go to become their primary financial partner,” Roberts added, noting that “these branches are really meant to expose these customers to our breadth of services.”
The J.P. Morgan Private Client service — which gives wealthy customers the concierge service, preferred savings rates and complimentary wealth planning — is only available at these new financial centers.
While any of the bank’s customers can visit one of these branches, only those who qualify for J.P. Morgan Private Client will get all the perks.
“The big area of focus in [the] last few years has been [our] wealth offering in the so-called mass affluent space within our consumer business and the origination machine for that is the branches,” JPMorgan CFO Jeremy Barnum said during an earnings call with reporters last week.
“That’s a big part of the reason, in addition to deposits, we’re such big fans of branches,” Barnum added.
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
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