Finance
JPMorgan Chase is heading upmarket to woo America’s millionaires
A living space in the new J.P. Morgan financial center branch format in Palm Beach.
Courtesy: JP Morgan
JPMorgan Chase thinks it has cracked the code on managing more money for America’s millionaires.
It’s not a new financial product, a novel software program or an enticing sign-up bonus. Instead, it’s a refurbished take on an old concept — the brick-and-mortar bank branch — along with new standards for service that are at the heart of its aspirations.
The bank is unveiling 14 of these new format branches — each acquired when JPMorgan took over First Republic in 2023 — in tony ZIP codes in New York, California, Florida and Massachusetts, including Napa, Palm Beach and Wellesley Hills.
It’s part of JPMorgan’s push to convince affluent Americans, many who already use Chase checking accounts or credit cards, that the bank is ready to manage their millions.
JPMorgan is the country’s biggest bank by deposits and assets and has a top share in areas as disparate as Wall Street trading and retail credit cards. But one of the only major categories where it isn’t a clear leader is in wealth management; peers like Morgan Stanley and Bank of America exceed it there.
While half of the 19 million affluent households in the U.S. bank with JPMorgan, it has just a 10% share of their investing dollars, according to Jennifer Roberts, CEO of Chase Consumer Banking.
“We have this giant opportunity to convince customers to have their wealth management business with us in addition to their deposit relationship,” Roberts said in a recent interview.
Helped by its acquisition of First Republic, which was known for catering to rich families living on either coast, JPMorgan decided to launch a new tier of service. Called J.P. Morgan Private Client, it is anchored by the new physical locations, of which there will be 31 by the end of next year.
The service comes with its own mobile banking app, but its main appeal is the in-person experience: Instead of being handed off to multiple employees like at a Chase branch, J.P. Morgan Private Client members are assigned to a single banker.
“What First Republic did really well was deliver a concierge-level of service where if you have an issue, a person owned it for you and you didn’t have to worry about it,” Roberts said. “So with this experience we are going to deliver a more elevated concierge type of service, like you would expect at a high-end hotel.”
The price of entry: at least $750,000 in deposits and investments, though Roberts said the bank is aiming for those with around $2 million to $3 million in balances.
Quiet opulence
The new locations, dubbed J.P. Morgan Financial Centers, have a warm feel and an earth-tone color palette that intentionally sets them apart from the nearly 5,000 Chase branches operated by the bank.
During a recent visit to a Manhattan location, the vibe is family office-meets hotel, with soaring ceilings, living room-style seating areas and art-filled meeting rooms scattered over two floors.
Gone is the traditional row of bank tellers; there is instead a concierge desk and a solitary ATM machine. Instead of lollipops, visitors are offered squares of Dylan’s chocolate. The space is quiet, except for the crack of a Perrier being opened or the whir of an espresso machine.
JP Morgan’s Palm Beach Reception.
Courtesy: JP Morgan
The design elements and hushed environment are “really meant to illustrate that we’re there to have a more serious, less-transactional conversation about your wealth planning over the course of time,” said Stevie Baron, JPMorgan’s head of affluent banking.
Those conversations involve planning for long-term goals and examining clients’ portfolios to see whether they are on track to reach them, he said.
Elements of the new high-end branch format could find their way to regular Chase branches, especially the 1,000 or so that are in high-income areas, Baron said.
JPMorgan executives have said the bank’s branch network has already succeeded as a feeder into the firm’s wealth management offerings.
The new service tier — which sits above the bank’s Chase Private Client offering, which is for those with at least $150,000 in balances and is delivered in the regular branches — is expected to help JPMorgan’s retail bank double client assets from the $1.08 trillion it reached in March.
“Obviously it’s a big challenge, because clients already have their established wealth managers, but it’s something that we’ve been making really strong progress in,” Roberts said.
Come one, come all
But attempting to create a new, more luxurious brand from a mainstream one — think the difference between Toyota and its luxury brand Lexus — is not without its risks. Or at least, momentary confusion.
So far, the two flagship financial centers in New York and San Francisco opened late last year haven’t seen heavy foot traffic, Roberts admitted.
“Our biggest challenge is that we don’t have people walking in because they don’t really understand what they are,” Roberts said. “So we just need to get the awareness out there.”
While JPMorgan is leaning on the first part of its name, rather than Chase, to signal exclusivity for the new branches, that may deter people from walking through the doors and starting conversations.
“I just want this to be acknowledged: We’re never going to turn someone away. Any customer can come and leverage any of our branches at any time,” Roberts said.
“We want people walking in, having the experience, meeting with our experts and understanding how we can help support their financial goals over time,” she said.
Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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