JP Morgan to launch UK online consumer bank

JP Morgan Chase is launching a UK digital consumer bank, pitting the might of the US's biggest lender against Lloyds, NatWest and other British retail banks.

The online operation will launch in the next few months under the Chase brand, JP Morgan said. Its initial product will be a "new take" on the current account with fast service around the clock, it added.

The service will be run from Canary Wharf, London, and customers will be served from a purpose-built contact centre in Edinburgh. JP Morgan said the digital bank had already created 400 jobs in the UK and would recruit more employees as it grows.

“We are bringing Chase to the UK because we want to provide customers with a new banking choice,” Gordon Smith, JP Morgan's head of consumer and community banking said. “The UK has a vibrant and highly competitive consumer banking marketplace, which is why we’ve designed the bank from scratch to specifically meet the needs of customers here.”

JP Morgan said it had sized up the UK market and found that the stability and trustworthiness of a bank is a big consideration for consumers when choosing an online lender. Its move is a rare attempt by an overseas bank to break into the UK retail banking market from scratch.

Sanoke Viswanathan, the bank's former chief administrative officer and strategy head for corporate and investment banking will run the business. JP Morgan's UK intentions started to emerge in August but the company has said little about its plans until now.

JP Morgan employs about 19,000 people in the UK including 12,000 in London, the base for its European investment banking operations. The bank, the biggest in the US with $3.4 trn of assets, is the biggest seller of current accounts, digital banking and credit cards in the US.