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Jamie Dimon spoke at Chase Bank's Mattapan community center on Nov. 23, 2021. Photo by Lucy Kennedy Photography/JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon visited one of the bank’s newest branches in Mattapan to tout the lender’s $30 billion diversity and equity initiatives Tuesday.
The bank held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the Mattapan branch, which Chase has branded as a “community center” on Nov. 23 that included Dimon, bank employees, elected officials and representatives from community organizations. The new branch opened in July.
Dimon noted that the U.S. still has racial barriers to address 170 years after the start of the Civil War, adding that the U.S. should acknowledge its flaws and try to fix them.
“I think this is the greatest country in the world – I hate when people denigrate it,” Dimon said at Tuesday’s ceremony. “I’m not woke; I’m not on the left. I think that this system is the best in the world. … That doesn’t mean that you can’t acknowledge its flaws.”
JPMorgan Chase last year made a five-year, $30 billion commitment to address racial equity, including $8 billion in mortgages for Black and Latinx households and $2 billion for small business lending in majority Black and Latinx communities.
The funding will be disbursed at the local level through branches like the one in Mattapan, Dimon said, noting that the new location has Black mortgage officers to work with the Mattapan community. A majority of the residents in the Boston neighborhood are people of color.
The Mattapan branch is one of 16 such “community centers” planned in the U.S. and the only one in New England. Chase began opening retail branches in Massachusetts two years ago as part of its expansion in New England and other states that did not have Chase branches.
In addition to traditional banking and lending products, the Mattapan branch has space for nonprofit organizations to hold events and support for small businesses. The branch has a community manager, Sabrina Correia, who will handle outreach in the Mattapan. Brian Samuel is the branch manager.
“I want our people to walk up and down the street and invite businesses in, invite the people in,” Dimon said.
While Citizens, Santander and Bank of America have Mattapan branches, the Boston neighborhood does not have a community bank.
Mattapan’s state Reps. Brandy Oakley Fluker and Russell Holmes also attended the event, along with Year Up CEO Gerald Chertavian.
Chase opened its first Greater Boston retail branches in 2019, and now has more than 30 branches in Massachusetts. The bank recently opened locations in Acton, Framingham and Wellesley, and plans for about a dozen more have been filed this year with the bank’s regulator, including in in Waltham, Harvard Square in Cambridge and West Roxbury.
