JPMorgan $JPM Chase announced plans to double the number of its Community Center branches, which are located in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, as part of an effort to expand financial health education to more Americans.
The bank plans to hire more than 150 additional community managers and aims to reach 5 million people with financial education programming
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JPMorgan $JPM Chase announced plans to double the number of its Community Center branches, which are located in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, as part of an effort to expand financial health education to more Americans.
The bank currently operates 19 Community Centers across the country. Along with doubling that count, JPMorgan Chase said it will hire more than 150 additional community managers — locally hired employees who lead financial education programming — bringing the total from roughly 160 to more than 320. The expansion is expected to create approximately 300 new jobs, the company said. New Community Centers are planned for Phoenix, Riverside, Calif., and Huntsville, Ala., among other locations.
Unlike a typical bank branch, each Community Center is built around open gathering spaces that financial educators, local nonprofits, and outside organizations can use at no charge to run workshops covering topics from household budgeting and credit building to homeownership and small business ownership. The company said that selling bank products falls outside the community managers' role, and that anyone in the surrounding community can attend events regardless of whether they hold a Chase account. Since the Harlem location debuted in 2019, the network has put on approximately 14,000 workshops attended by over 1 million people in total, the bank said. The expanded network is aimed at reaching 5 million people.
"We try to meet people where they are, and then give them the tools and resources they might need to take their next step successfully," said Diedra Porché, head of Chase's community and business development division, according to the Associated Press.
The program has produced measurable results. At the original Harlem location, personal savings balances grew 73% in the branch's first five years, the company said. There is also a commercial upside: internal Chase reports have shown that establishing a Community Center in an underserved area draws new customers and account activity at levels that outpace comparable nearby branches.
The Community Center expansion is part of JPMorgan Chase's broader American Dream Initiative, which the bank announced earlier as a multi-year effort to expand economic opportunity through targeted investments across the U.S. That initiative includes a commitment to provide nearly $80 billion in lending to small businesses over the next 10 years and aims to increase the number of small businesses the bank serves from seven million to 10 million.
Banks are required by law to provide services to low-income communities under the Community Reinvestment Act, though the form those services take varies. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has argued that planting physical branches in low-income areas — where they create local jobs and channel financing — delivers more lasting change than philanthropic donations alone.
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