JPMorgan Chase Q1 profits jump 52% amid banking turmoil

JPMorgan Chase

JPMorgan Chase & Co. posted a 52% jump in its first quarter profits, helped by higher interest rates, which allowed the bank to charge customers more for loans. The bank saw deposits grow noticeably, as business and customers flocked to the banking titan after the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

With JPMorgan’s strong results, as well as the solid results from Wells Fargo on Friday, there seem to be few signs of potential trouble in the banking system "at among the nation’s biggest, most complex financial institutions."

The nation’s biggest bank by assets posted a profit of $12.62 billion, compared to a profit of $8.28 billion in the same period a year earlier. On a per-share basis, the bank earned $4.10 a share, up from $2.63 a share a year ago, beating analysts’ expectations.

Most of the profit growth came from higher interest rates. The bank’s net interest income was $20.8 billion in the quarter, up 49% from last year.

JPMorgan grew deposits by $37 billion during the quarter, up to $2.4 trillion. Deposits at big banks had been falling for several quarters as consumers spent down their pandemic savings and businesses tapped into their stored cash to pay bills. But with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in March, businesses have been withdrawing their funds from smaller banks and moving them into the larger banks, which are considered "too big to fail" and have an implicit government backstop.

JPMorgan and CEO Jamie Dimon have been the industry’s go-to problem solvers for banking issues for years now. After the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, JPMorgan helped put together a consortium of other big banks to keep First Republic Bank from being next to fail. The group of banks put $30 billion in uninsured deposits into the bank, which appears to have at least bought First Republic some time to repair its balance sheet and maybe find a buyer.

"Our years of investment and innovation, vigilant risk and controls framework, and fortress balance sheet allowed us to produce these returns, and also act as a pillar of strength in the banking system and stand by our clients during a period of heightened volatility and uncertainty," Dimon said in a statement.