Meanwhile, the bank is planning to boost its small business unit by hiring more bankers
Banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co. has laid off hundreds of employees across its mortgage division.
According to a Bloomberg report, JPMorgan has let go of hundreds of mortgage employees, including some managers, as the bank’s residential lending business hit a slump amid the higher interest-rate environment. JPMorgan’s origination volume fell 60% in 2022 as homebuying activity continued to cool.
“As we’ve said in the past, we regularly review our business and customer needs and adjust our staffing accordingly – creating new roles where we see the need or reducing positions when appropriate,” a spokesperson for New York-based JPMorgan told Bloomberg in an email.
Allison Williams, director of research and co-head of North American Equities at Bloomberg Intelligence, commented: “I think it’s just a natural, expected reduction in capacity. Obviously, we had two incredibly strong years of mortgage volume. And that came down last year and 2022.
Williams highlighted that on the same day as the layoffs, JPMorgan said it intends to hire more than 500 small-business bankers in their retail branches through 2024, boosting the company’s workforce serving small enterprises by 20%.
“We’re still opening branches, and in general around the world, we are still hiring bankers, consumer bankers, small-business bankers, middle-market bankers, folks overseas. We have more clients to cover,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said in an interview with Reuters.
“So, I would say it’s not a broad statement of weakness out there,” Williams said. “I think it’s a bank that is adjusting to some cyclical pressures in the mortgage business but still looking to build over the long term.”
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