‘Trust me’: Jamie Dimon to defend JP Morgan’s $2bn-a-week bill
Jamie Dimon is set to defend JP Morgan’s $2bn-a-week cost bill today as analysts and shareholders gather for the banking giant’s annual investor day.
The bank chief – generally considered to be the world’s most influential banker – unveiled higher-than-expected plans for 2026 spend at the beginning of the year.
JP Morgan told markets spending would rise 10 per cent to $105bn in 2026 even as rivals in the UK and US looked to slash costs.
“Growth prospects amid higher-than-peer expense growth will be key for investors,” Herman Chan, senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said.
The firm’s spending spree spans across segments including recruitment, branches and real estate.
The bank kicked off plans for its retail arm Chase to open 160 new branches in over 30 US states and refurb around 600 locations earlier this month. The move came despite a global industry-wide row-back on in-person banking.
During a call following the bank’s fourth-quarter results in January, Dimon told investors he would not “try to meet some expense target, and then 10 years from now you’ll be asking us the question how did JPMorgan get left behind”.
He added he was “not going to be giving detail on every single thing every single quarter”.
“Part of it is to trust me, I’m sorry.”
In 2025, JP Morgan towered above its peers as the only bank to break above $80bn on costs. Bank of America came in second around the $70bn mark, whilst Citi and Wells Fargo did not surpass $60bn.
Dimon: JP Morgan will have fewer employees in five years time
Pressure for lenders to slash costs has ramped up amid the reduction of interest rates – which has stripped away the assumed-luxury of high interest income – and growth of AI.
Analysts have predicted banks would be “pressed hard this year” to share a “coherent financial story for AI implementation: what is being spent now and what it means for the future shape of expenses overall and headcount in particular.
In the UK, banks are doubling down on AI as a way of slashing expenses. Barclays has transformed batches of its decades-old code into modern, cloud-based platforms helping make its previously rigid infrastructure more agile.
This shift has become a common move for financial services giants looking to shed their legacy skin.
Meanwhile, Lloyds has bet heavily on tech, going as far as putting its chief executive and top bosses through an AI bootcamp at Cambridge University.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Dimon said companies could not ignore AI or “put your head in the sand”.
He added JP Morgan would likely have fewer employees in five years’ time amid the roll out the tech.