Chase Bank’s Jacksonville strategy: More locations, deeper community roots (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — When leaders of JPMorgan Chase Bank look at Jacksonville, they see opportunity.
The New York-based bank is a third-of-the-way through a plan launched in January 2024 to expand its local presence by 50%. Standing at a total 20 locations this time last year, it now has 24 open, and more on the way.
Company leaders met with city officials to cut the ribbon on its latest location at 917 University Boulevard N. in the College Park neighborhood of Arlington Wednesday morning.
It’s the latest step in the bank’s ongoing commitment to strengthen Chase’s offerings in the area.
“Our strategy that sets us apart is that while some banks are closing branches in the region, we’re expanding our network,” said Patrice Fuller, the community manager of Jacksonville locations. “We’re growing our network, trying to connect with our community members, residents, business owners and just families. We want to be part of the local economy, and that’s what we’re aiming to do.”
The expansion is a sign of the success the bank has seen in Jacksonville, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in a conversation with the Business Journal and other media outlets last year.
“Jacksonville was actually the first new market we ever put a branch in, because I wanted to test ‘can you go to a new market and build a profitable thing’,” he said at the time. “And that branch is now 20, that 20 is going to 30.”
In the past year, the bank has opened four new branches, including College Park, with a fifth to be opened in late March in St. Augustine, a spokesperson told the Business Journal. The sixth of ten promised locations is planned to open in Fernandina Beach this summer, according to the bank.
Aside from its usual offerings as a bank, the locations are also part of leadership’s move to bring financial education to Jacksonville’s residents.
Jacksonville is one of the cities where Chase offers a $5,000 grant for those buying homes in predominantly Black, Hispanic and Latino neighborhoods. Buyers in those neighborhoods also have access to a low-down-payment mortgage option.
“We do home buying education workshops … we do credit workshops budgeting. We want to educate the community as much as possible,” said Fuller. “I always hear people sometimes say that they want to be a homeowner. It’s the American dream. It’s any dream to want to own a home, and we are committed to doing just that, helping them get into housing.”
Chase has about $2.06 billion in area deposits as of the second quarter of 2024, according to the latest FDIC data.
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