JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon made it clear during a visit to Washington, D.C., on Thursday that he is in favor of a restructuring of the financial regulatory agencies that oversee his bank and his industry.
“I think it’s time in my view to take a step back and look at all the rules and regulations put in place,” he told reporters after a closed-door meeting with Republican lawmakers and other top bank CEOs on the issue of whether big lenders are “debanking” certain customers.
“You have got to take a step back and look at the whole thing.”
The new comments from the boss of the largest US bank coincide with attempts by the Trump administration to rein in one big bank regulatory agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and reportedly rethink how to restructure other big regulators that oversee the nation’s largest lenders.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon meeting lawmakers in 2022. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz ·REUTERS / Reuters
Last weekend, the Trump administration ordered a halt to effectively all work at the CFPB and barred employees from showing up to the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters this week.
Many Republicans have opposed the CFPB since its creation and have often called for its closure, arguing that Washington has too many redundant regulators.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is also reportedly discussing plans to consolidate other bank regulators without Congress’s input, according to a Wednesday report in the Wall Street Journal. The discussions include possibly folding the FDIC into the Treasury Department and combining it with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Dimon on Thursday did not sound overly concerned about the fate of the CFPB, which oversees how banks and other financial firms treat US consumers.
“There is consumer protection out of the SEC, the OCC, the Federal Reserve, and the question is how do you design a system that is good for everybody, that makes sense. It isn’t just for the CFPB alone,” Dimon told reporters.
Dimon even passed out a chart to reporters on his way into the meeting titled “Complexities of the Regulatory System,” with numerous lines drawn to the CFPB and other regulators that have some oversight of JPMorgan’s various businesses.
The chart, which was first printed in a Dimon letter to shareholders, is referred to by executives inside JPM as the “spaghetti chart.”
A copy of a chart that Jamie Dimon handed out to reporters Thursday in Washington, D.C. ·JPMorgan Chase
Dimon on Thursday also repeated some points he has made previously about debanking, or whether banks are denying services to certain customers.
He told reporters that “we don’t debank people for their religious or political affiliations” but that “there are a lot of things that should be fixed” — specifically anti-money laundering rules.
Such rules “are extraordinary, and it does cause a lot of people to be pushed out of the system because banks were afraid of being sued, fined, because if, after the fact, something goes wrong, coulda, woulda, shoulda, you could pay a billion dollars.”
When asked if he blamed regulators for the debanking problem, he said, “Pretty much, yeah.”
Debanking was the main topic of the closed-door meeting with Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott, other committee Republicans, and many of the nation’s other top banking CEOs.
The list of bankers expected to attend included Bank of America (BAC) CEO Brian Moynihan, Wells Fargo (WFC) CEO Charles Scharf, outgoing US Bancorp (USB) CEO Andrew Cecere, PNC (PNC) CEO William Demchak, Truist (TFC) CEO Bill Rogers, and Capital One (COF) CEO Richard Fairbank.
The claim that big banks have discriminated against certain customers is gaining new visibility as the GOP presses for legislation that would better define when banks can decline service. The crypto industry has joined the call for changes after alleging that digital asset companies were unfairly denied bank services in recent years.
President Donald Trump confronted Moynihan last month publicly about it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where Trump told Moynihan, “I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank.”
Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, leaves the U.S. Capitol after a meeting with Republican members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Thursday. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images) ·Tom Williams via Getty Images
The president also appeared to include Dimon in his confrontation.
“I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and Jamie and everybody else, I hope you open your banks to conservatives because what you’re doing is wrong,” Trump added.
Last week, both the Senate and House held hearings on the issue and no bank executives were present. But the topic even drew support from one notable Democrat: Elizabeth Warren.
“Donald Trump was on to a real problem when he criticized Bank of America for its debanking practices,” Warren said.
One person familiar with Thursday’s meeting said it was a candid, back-and-forth conversation focused on the problems of the current regime banks must follow and how it can lead to inappropriate debanking. Another said the majority of debanking problems can be fixed with clearer and less subjective guidelines on who bank examiners consider a risky customer.
Scott, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement following the meeting that “it’s clear that regulators have seriously overreached on issues from Basel III to debanking, and Congress needs to work to rein in and right-size the impacts of the Biden administration’s burdensome and arbitrary regulations.”
“My message is clear: no regulator, and no financial institution, is above the principles of fairness and market access.”
David Hollerith is a senior reporter for Yahoo Finance covering banking, crypto, and other areas in finance.
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