Some large institutional customers of JPMorgan Chase will soon have to either pay a fee for some of their deposits, move them to another product such as a money-fund sweep account, or else hold their deposits at another bank.
The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the money center bank was preparing to charge a fee for large uninsured deposits as part of its strategy to discourage such deposits in the face of tighter regulations after the financial crisis.
The move was disclosed by CFO Marianne Lake at an investor presentation.
New rules require banks to maintain enough high-quality assets that could be converted into cash during a crisis to cover a projected flight of deposits over 30 days. The most likely deposits to leave first would be large, uninsured deposits, and so regulators now require banks to maintain reserves for those deposits — instead of allowing them to be used for profitable activities like making loans.
JPMorgan Chase wants to charge a fee to offset that reduction in profitability.
In an investor presentation Tuesday, the company said that it wanted to reduce corporate deposits by up to $100 billion by the end of 2015, the WSJ wrote.
Affected corporate clients include a variety of financial firms, including hedge funds, private-equity firms, and foreign banks. The affected clients collectively hold $200 billion of certain “excess” deposits, out of the roughly $390 billion of total deposits from financial institutions, according to the WSJ.
Other banks such as Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America have also informed their corporate clients about the new regulations, and in some cases are also charging fees or working to find alternatives for some of the deposits.
