Dive Brief:

• JPMorgan Chase is expanding its presence in Charlotte, North Carolina, opening a new corporate office and adding a few hundred jobs in the city over the next two years.
• The nation’s largest lender will occupy about 145,000 square feet of space in a mixed-use building in the city’s SouthPark neighborhood, bringing together JPMorgan employees who work in two buildings, the New York City-based bank said in a Tuesday news release.  
• The new office, which can accommodate about 1,000 employees, is expected to open in early 2028.

Dive Insight:

JPMorgan has about 600 Charlotte-based corporate employees working from two buildings in SouthPark. 

Hires set to occur over the next two years are estimated to bring the company closer to 1,000 corporate employees in Charlotte by 2028, Carrie Galloway, head of the Carolinas for J.P. Morgan Private Bank and vice chair of the Carolinas market leadership team, said in an interview.

Roles will stretch across JPMorgan’s commercial and investment bank, its private bank and the consumer bank, although many new roles will be in the back office supporting the commercial bank, Galloway said. 

“Everybody who's in a corporate role will sit together across these five floors,” she said. “The idea behind that is we want to be able to support clients across the full life cycle, from households and small businesses to large companies. And many of our clients and customers have relationships with more than one line of business.”

JPMorgan first opened a commercial banking office in Charlotte in 2011. A private bank office followed in 2017, and the bank’s first retail branch opened in Charlotte in 2020. 

Counting its 25 area branch locations, the lender has close to 1,000 employees in Charlotte, Galloway said. Charlotte is the country’s second-largest banking center, after New York City. Bank of America and Truist are based in the city, and Wells Fargo has about 27,000 employees in the area.  

In addition to the city’s robust existing talent pool, “we've also found a lot of interest among experienced workers who are open to moving here,” she said.

In Charlotte, the bank now serves about 500,000 consumers and about 35,000 small-business clients.

“Our expansion in Charlotte reflects both the depth of talent here and the growth of the market, but it also speaks to our business success and our intention to accelerate that success to serve more of the Queen City’s growing business community,” said Matt Beardall, JPMorgan’s head of commercial banking for the East Coast, in the news release. “Having our talented employees together in a new, state-of-the-art work space will add fuel to the fire of our momentum – and that of our clients.”

Galloway noted the new location will also feature a space dedicated to private bank client meetings and a flexible training center to accommodate onboarding, employee development, town halls and internal events.

“By bringing our teams together, we can serve our clients more efficiently and holistically,” Galloway said in the release. “While we have been serving the people and businesses of Charlotte for many years, this move reflects not only our continued commitment to this market, but our intention to grow here in the years to come.”