J.P. Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon’s message to his management team is: Be frightened. The blunt assessment was in response to questions from analysts during a conference call, including Mike Mayo of Wells Fargo who pointed out that with rich, tech-like valuations, fintech players have “trounced” the traditional banks in recent years.
“Absolutely, we should be scared shitless about that,” Dimon said. “We have plenty of resources, a lot of very smart people. We’ve just got to get quicker, better, faster. … As you look at what we’ve done, you’d say we’ve done a good job, but the other people have done a good job, too.”
Dimon said he sent his deputies a list of global competitors, and that PayPal, Square, Stripe, Ant Financial as well as US tech giants including Amazon, Apple and Google were names the bank needs to keep an eye on. The rivals are also clients of the bank’s commercial and investment banking in many cases, he added. Competition will be particularly tight in the world of payments, he said: “I expect to see very, very tough, brutal competition in the next 10 years,” Dimon said.