Chase CEO visits Seattle, talks social justice

By Jason Cruz
Northwest Asian weekly newspaper

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon (center) with local Chase employees (photo by Jason Cruz)

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, visited Seattle for a city meeting with customers and employees. On October 6, he met with media representatives to talk about the company’s commitment to social justice issues.

Dimon raised issues such as the anti-Asian sentiment that emerged as a result of the pandemic and the Atlanta shootings that occurred in March 2021.

“Well, we tried to stop all anti-everything,” said Dimon about the company’s attitude towards intolerance and hatred. “We don’t like it. We try to support our employees and we have programs to do so. ”The morning after the shootings of March 16, 2021 at three spas in the Atlanta area, Dimon sent a message to his employees about the ongoing fight against hatred.

Since the Black Lives Matter protests, the company has focused on what it could do to help.

“JPMorgan has always been a leader in diversity, long before the George Floyd assassination and long before COVID,” said Dimon. “COVID and the George Floyd assassination simply underscore what we already knew, that the black community has been left behind for a long time and is suffering much longer than most.”

Dimon promoted JPMorgan Chase’s Advancing Black Leaders program, which aims to attract, hire, retain and develop top talent within the black community. This led to Advancing Black Pathways, an initiative that builds on existing efforts and has pledged $ 30 billion as of October 2020 to promote racial justice through credit, financial literacy and recruitment.

Advancing Black Pathways included programs to finance black owned businesses, colored entrepreneurs, and business training for Black and Latinx. It also offered mortgages to Black and Latinx communities.
“It’s not just black and Latin, it goes through everything,” said Dimon.

“When you’re a big company, you have to talk about big things.” Dimon added, “But this is happening at the local level.” Dimon noted that the community’s Chase Banks would support these programs and the company is trying to establish banks in areas that need representation. Chase will also help a million people open inexpensive checking and / or savings accounts. It is committed to hiring 150 new community managers, opening new Community Center branches in underserved communities, and stepping up marketing to reach more customers who are currently underserved, have no or no bank account.

“We’re tracking everything,” said Dimon of the company’s workplace benchmarking to ensure programs are up to par. not only in terms of race but also in terms of women. He found that Chase did a great job with every population group except blacks.

“It has its own special efforts,” he said, as there is a special emphasis on recruiting and hiring blacks. When asked if employees were pushing these programs back, he said, “No, and I don’t care.”

Dimon noted that he was pleased to hear a consensual reprimand for the murder of George Floyd from CEOs of many other companies.

“Almost everyone I know said, ‘This has to stop.'”

As part of his response to helping businesses out from the pandemic, Chase has actively supported small business owners and nonprofits in Washington state as part of his Small Business Flex Fund. It does this in conjunction with Washington State and is a public-private partnership that targets largely struggling, underserved, and minority organizations. Chase was one of the first major banks to make this commitment.

In his annual letter to shareholders, Dimon commended his employees for facing these times of adversity with “grace and strength” and hopes that “the citizens of the world community can get over this unprecedented pandemic and look forward to a better future . ”

Jason Cruz can be reached at info@nwasianweekly.com.

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