JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 5 of 12

Ebrahim Poonawala: Good morning. I guess just first question, following-up on the outlook for the economy, like we’ve all been worried about a recession for year and there is a debate about the lag effects of the Fed rate hike cycle when you think about — Jeremy, I think you mentioned you have an unemployment outlook relatively similar today versus a quarter ago. How worried should we be in terms of the credit cycle six months to 12 months from now or are you leaning towards concluding that maybe U.S. businesses, consumers have absorbed the late-cycle a lot better than we expected a year ago.

Jeremy Barnum: Yes. So I am sure, Jamie has some views here. But in my in my view, I would just caution against jumping to too many super positive conclusions based on a couple of recent trends. And I think generally our point is less about trying to predict a particular outcome and more about trying to make sure that we don’t get too much euphoria that over concentrates people on one particular predictions when we know that there is a range of outcomes out there. So obviously, we were talking a lot about the potential for a soft lending right now. No lending, neither, it’s inflation or whatever and — whether our own views on that have changed meaningfully. I don’t know, but the broader point is we continue to be quite focused on, Jamie’s prior comments that loss rates still have time to — room to normalize even both pandemics we’re probably over-earning on credit a little bit Obviously, we’ve talked about the expectation that the NII is going to come down quite a bit, so even, forgetting about whether you’ve got some surprisingly negative outcomes on the economy is always today even in the central case, you just need to recognize that there should be some significant normalization.

Jamie Dimon: Yes. I would just add, the 5.8% is not our prediction, that is the average of the unemployment under multiple scenarios that we have to use which hypothetical for CECL. Asset predictions on something different and we don’t know the outcome. We trying to be really clear here, the consumer in good shape, their spending down their excess cash. That’s all. Tailwinds. If we go into recession, we’re going with rather good condition, low borrowings and good, our price-value still but the headwinds are substantial and somewhat unprecedented. There is more Ukraine Oil Gas, market, timing, unprecedented fiscal, needs of governments, few team which we’ve never experienced before, I just think people should take a deep breath of that and we don’t know those things because the soft landing in mild recession for our recession. And obviously, sure we will be the best.

Ebrahim Poonawala: Got it. And just a follow-up on the upcoming Basel reforms. Two questions. You’ve talked about the impact of the U.S. economy like others have said the same at this point is that falling on deaf ears. And secondly, maybe, Jeremy. If you can touch upon. This structural changes that you expect to make in the capital markets business because of FRTB . Thank you.

Jeremy Barnum: Yes, so on your first point. I mean, I think you can just read Vice-Chair of our speech right. He addressed that point early directly. He clearly doesn’t agree as this is right. So we’ll see what happens. We continue to feel that all else equal, higher capital requirements, definitely are going to increase the cost of credit, which is bad for the economy. So we’ll see what happens on that. On an FRTB, it’s really very nuanced, it’s probably like to much detail for this call to be honest, but just to give you like one immaterial and insignificant but useful example, one-product under FRTB has yield curve spread options and if the FRTB proposal goes through, as currently written, that product becomes not viable.

Page 5 of 12