Jamie Dimon says this is the ‘biggest risk’ to private credit

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon named cyber threats as one of the biggest risks in the private credit industry right now in an interview Wednesday.

Dimon sat down with hosts of the “Acquired” podcast for a live taping at Radio City Music Hall. The conversation mostly centered around Dimon’s career but took a pivot when one of the hosts asked Dimon what he saw as some of the biggest problems in private credit today. Dimon named two areas: asset prices and cyber threats. 

After addressing asset prices as being "rather high" without much upside, Dimon stated, “The biggest risk to me is cyber.” 

“We're very good at it,” he added. “We work with all the government agencies…we spend $800 million a year or something on it. We educate people on it. We just do.” 

“You're talking about grids and communications companies and water and even part of the military establishment,” Dimon continued. “The protections are not what you need if we ever get any kind of war where cyber is involved — and China is very good at it, and so is Russia. But Russia is mostly criminal which is slightly different.”

Before letting Dimon continue with his assessment on cyber threats, Acquired co-host Ben Gilbert said, “Alright, I'm going to pull us back to the story. We're going to fast forward to 2023.”

Gilbert’s co-host David Rosenthal chimed in saying, “We're not really equipped to talk about Russia. It's not what we do on Acquired, but thank you.” 

In January, Goldman Sachs’ chief financial officer Denis Coleman echoed similar concerns, saying, “the breadth of cyber risk in the world is also very elevated.”

“As an industry-leading financial services firm, we are a natural target for cyber criminals. We see and prevent the latest techniques criminals are using to acquire what they're after — your money,” Phil Ferraro, JPMorgan Chase’s former global head of its client cybersecurity education program, said in a video from 2021.