Can JPMorgan Chase Tell a Social Story?
By: Shani Horowitz-Rozen
Tags: Housing, Strategic Communication, Business, Social Change, Race

JPMorgan Chase’s plan

JPMorgan Chase is a key actor in the financial markets. For decades, it has been criticized by politicians, social advocates, and public leaders for aggressively promoting mortgages, discriminating against Black and Latinx mortgage borrowers, and other financial affairs. Thus, its new plan addresses many of the gaps and burdens the bank was accused of causing or encouraging.

The bank’s initiative is impressive in many ways. Financially, $30 billion is a groundbreaking amount to invest over a relatively short period of time. A donation of $2 billion for nonprofits is an increase in JPMorgan Chase’s current donations and emphasizes supporting Black, and Latinx led organizations. Essentially, the bank’s plan is a meaningful declaration of its acknowledgment of the dire problem of racial inequality in America. The bank’s detailed plan to support underserved communities could become an important Wall Street corporate responsibility benchmark for evaluating social change programs. Lessons learned from the plan, and its execution will benefit both the financial, governmental, and nonprofit sectors.

Though these are important causes, we should remember that they also correspond with the bank’s goals of increasing its customer numbers. Critics of the bank could see its investment as a business decision designed to funnel in new customers, drive more profit, and gain a positive reputation among the democrats who may control the White House after the upcoming elections.

What’s missing in JPMorgan Chase’s social change story?

The largest bank in North America is telling a financial story with measurable goals and code-names for investments. What’s missing? Empathy and the potential tangible and intangible effects it will have on people’s lives. Simply put, the bank states the details of its ambitious plan, but it doesn’t move from abstract numbers to a relatable, concrete example, showing how the plan will eventually change one family’s budget.

By telling the story of racial inequality in corporate financial headlines, JPMorgan Chase missed an invaluable opportunity to shift the limelight to the meaning of inequality in real life for real people. The bank could have announced its ambitious plan to minimize the inequality and explained and emphasized the everyday implications of that inequality for underserved communities.

The bank’s bold statements and plans are missing two key aspects of a social story. First, the bank missed an important opportunity to define the problems it tries to solve. Defining the problem is not only crucial to design the correct solution, but would also benefit JPMorgan Chase twice over: by framing the bank as a key actor that understands the barriers faced by people, and by establishing itself as Wall Street’s leader in setting the guidelines for future financial discussions about overcoming racial inequality and inequity.

Second, the bank’s story is mostly financial, as it focuses on the economic bird’s-eye view of big numbers. Yet, the bold numbers lack feeling. Namely, they don’t demonstrate the meaning of the change the bank leads for the Black and Latinx communities. If the bank had included this aspect, it would present data and make its message relatable and engaging for the audience. When telling a financial story of social change, the results are only exciting when the audience is fully invested. In JPMorgan Chase’s case, the audience is not just Wall Street and other financial institutions, but also the American people, specifically the Black and Latinx communities, their beneficiaries.

A clear explanation of the barriers to opening a checking and savings account or taking out a business loan or mortgage, which the bank is trying to solve, could add a powerful meaning to its actions. This explanation would signify its future implications for a long term social change. In that case, Wall Street would have to follow suit.

The bank is trying to solve big problems, yet the problems are not big just because of their national scale, but also because of their meaning. Every person that is being discriminated against and who struggles to take out a mortgage or a business loan feels that their problem is big. Part of JPMorgan Chase’s story should be not just the national scale, but the essence, the struggle that racial inequality causes.

An effective social story would include an overview of the problem and an explanation of the solution's impact in both the large numbers and in real life. This addition would include an ideal case study detailing how the plan will change families’ paths towards homeownership or financial health.