That marked a 20% jump in revenue from a year earlier, matching the pace Dimon the business was on in December. JPMorgan’s investment bankers posted a 34% jump in fees for providing merger advice and underwriting stock and bond offerings.
The strength of the Wall Street businesses helped profit rise 42% to $12.1 billion. Analysts were expecting a 4% drop.
The bank’s stock was up 11% this month through Thursday, after a drop of almost 9% in 2020.
In releasing almost $3 billion of its credit reserves, far more than analysts had predicted, JPMorgan is signaling more optimism about the outlook for the economy. The bank said in October that it didn’t expect material losses in its consumer portfolio to show up until the second half of 2021. Net charge-offs fell 11% from the third quarter to $1.05 billion.
“While positive vaccine and stimulus developments contributed to these reserve releases this quarter, our credit reserves of over $30 billion continue to reflect significant near-term economic uncertainty and will allow us to withstand an economic environment far worse than the current base forecasts by most economists,” Dimon said in a statement Friday.
JPMorgan said $24.2 billion, or 2.9%, of the loans in its consumer portfolio were still in payment deferral at the end of the fourth quarter, down from $29.3 billion in the previous period. Most were residential real estate loans. It said that 91% of the accounts that exited payment deferral were current on their payments.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.