Aug. 3, 2021

As chairman and CEO of the nation’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon doesn’t make it to many branch ribbon-cuttings.

But the one in Sioux Falls today wasn’t just any ribbon-cutting.

It marked Chase’s entry into its 48th state – a milestone Dimon said he has awaited for 20 years.

There was a time, he reminded the crowd, that the federal government tried to prevent banks from reaching that scale.

“And I thought they made a bad decision for the United States. Not for JPMorgan Chase — because we come to town, we spend money building the branch, we spend money out from the branch. We hire a bunch of people. We have local vendors,” Dimon said.

“We bring in capital, small-business lending, Chase Wealth Management. We have mortgages. We help middle-market companies. And we get philanthropic. We want to be in this community like any other person here. You say, ‘We trust them, we respect them, it’s great to have them as part of this community.’”

The Sioux Falls location at Empire Place on West 41st Street is the first of at least three in the market.

Dimon, who has served as CEO of the nation’s largest bank since 2005, has been named one of the world’s most influential individuals by Time magazine four times. Among the Fortune 500 CEOs, Dimon was voted most admired among his peers in 2020 for the second consecutive year.

We sat down with him as part of the visit — a stop on an annual road trip he conducts talking with staff and customers.

To watch the full interview, click below.

As he has traveled the country, which included a stop in North Dakota today – market No. 47 – Dimon said the themes have been clear.

“I think we’re growing. I think we’re coming out of his pandemic,” he said. “Consumers are in great shape. People are a little worried about Delta (the COVID variant), but we don’t think that’s going to derail the United States economy.”

The migration of new residents experienced in Sioux Falls over the past year is part of a small, broader movement, he predicted.

“Because you can do more things remotely. So you can do it as a company. You can build different things,” he said. “And a lot of these places are very hospitable to business, and that’s really important.”

Communities seeking to become locations of choices for individuals and businesses should keep some “basic” things in mind, Dimon said.

That starts with quality education and continues with a pro-business environment.

“I’m not asking to give giveaways to business, but a pro-business environment could be taxes, that could be working with a local community college to provide the kind of jobs you need – cyber or coding or something like that. It’s the arts, it’s the friendliness, it’s activities people can do like swimming and fishing and take a trip to the Badlands, something like that.”

JPMorgan Chase, which will staff its first branch with 10 employees, has asked all employees to come back into physical locations 50 percent of the time.

“If you are vaccinated, you don’t have to mask or socially distance. If you’re unvaccinated, you’re going to mask and get tested,” he said.

“There’ll be more hybrid over time. We’ll be testing that, how it works. … It’s got to work for the client. This branch has to be staffed. You can’t have any conversation about working from home. It’s got to be staffed. There are other jobs that maybe you can partially work from home, and we’ll figure it out.”

It’s not an immediate concern, he added.

“The Zoom land, Zoom world, does not work as well for apprenticeships, for teaching, for creative combustion, for management, for idea generation, for learning a lot. It just doesn’t. So people have to be careful about making too many quick conclusions.”