NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� JPMorgan Chase will significantly expand its national 鈥淐ommunity Center鈥� program, the bank said Thursday, with plans to double the number of these specialized branches the bank operates particularly in low-income neighborhoods.
Along with doubling the number of Community Center branches, the bank plans to hire an additional 150 employees, known as community managers, and provide additional programming at these locations.
The Community Center program , particularly in areas where residents may be underbanked or unbanked. Chase opened its first Community Center in Harlem in 2019 as an experiment and the program鈥檚 success led to 19 locations in operation across the country. Jamie Dimon, the bank鈥檚 CEO, has historically attended the grand opening of nearly all the Community Centers, and their openings are typically attended by local government officials and other dignitaries.
鈥淲e are doubling down on our efforts to expand access,鈥� said Diedra Porch茅, head of Chase’s community and business development division.
These Community Centers are still Chase branches, but they include open areas where financial educators, local nonprofit organizations and other groups can provide financial workshops to neighborhood residents. The programs and workshops are free to the public. The bank says the locally-hired community managers who run the centers are directed not to sell products, and attendees are not required to be Chase customers or interested in Chase products.
The centers are focused on financial education, ranging from teaching a person how to build a household budget to workshops for small business owners. The bank estimates it has hosted 14,000 of these workshops since the first community center opened, with more than 1 million attendees. Chase has set a goal of increasing the programming to reach 5 million attendees.
Banks by law are required to provide services to low-income communities under the Community Reinvestment Act. But how banks provide these services can be in several different forms. While Chase does charitable giving through the JPMorgan Chase Foundation, Dimon has said in the past that he believes the bank can have a greater impact in low-income communities by opening branches in those neighborhoods, creating jobs and providing financing in underserved areas.
鈥淲e try to meet people where they are, and then give them the tools and resources they might need to take their next step successfully,鈥� Porch茅 said.
The program is also generally good business for the bank. While there are no salespeople involved in the actual programming, the opening of a community center branch in an underserved neighborhood tends to result in new accounts being opened and new customers for the bank. Chase has issued reports in the past that show its community centers lead to higher account openings, often far more account openings than what other branches in the area provide.
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