Ben Walter
CEO, Chase Business Banking
Years of experience: 29
Age: 51

JPMorgan Chase has quickly established its footprint in Boston and has shown that it wants to be an active participant in the business community.

Chase recently provided $1.3 million in grants to local small businesses, and hosted “The Experience, a complimentary, all-day expo. The grants were provided to the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund, Philanthropy Massachusetts and the Boston Impact Initiative Fund and are designed to help local small businesses increase revenue, improve operations and gain access to capital.

Chase calls the “The Experience” a “small business bootcamp.” Attendants received marketing and best practices advice from one-on-ones with experts and main stage speeches.

Q: How does Chase Bank remained committed to the small businesses community, particularly in Boston?

A: Chase has relationships with 7 million small businesses across the country and 72,000 in the Greater Boston area. We aim to be there for small businesses in communities, and that’s the key piece of it. We do understand that small business is a local affair. We staff our teams locally with people who live in the communities that they serve. So our team members live, work and have relationships in Boston and in Massachusetts, and that’s how we show our commitment to the area.

Of course, we do the philanthropic things that we do. When you talk about the impact that JPMorgan Chase tries to have in its communities, we try to do it in two ways. One is by just the core business that we do. So we think by being great bankers, lenders, payment handlers, we can help small businesses thrive. That helps them become more self-reliant, that helps local communities get stronger. We do that for profit, unabashedly. We’re capitalists.

We also think that there are places where the market falls short, and that’s where we tend to do our philanthropic work. We tend to do that under pillars like business growth and entrepreneurship, because we believe it’s relevant. It’s more relevant to our mission as a bank, but it’s also because we believe that it fosters community, self-resiliency and self-reliance.

Q: You’ve had events in Boston, you have granted funds; how does Chase look to continue to have a physical impact on the Boston business community?

A: When we started, our deposit share … you couldn’t even find it on the map when we came into the physical market a few years ago, and we already have sort of 2 to 3 percent share there. We built over 60 branches in the Greater Boston area, and that tells you how committed we are.

We are going to continue to do events. We’re going to continue to hire the best business bankers in the industry, the best business relationship managers to cover those clients. We’re going to continue to deliver the best of the digital tools that we create to the market, and we’re going to hire more consultants who are going to be able to impact more businesses. We’re going to create those ecosystems. We’re going to continue to engage in the local community organizations that help foster an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Massachusetts.

Q: Whether it’s an event in Boston or a retail presence, how important is it to have a physical, in-person presence?

A: Yeah, the computers might take over some time in my lifetime, but it’s going to be a while. Actually, what we find is when we open a branch near someone, yes, they come in and interact with our people, but they also interact with our digital tools more. So we find one plus one is two and a half to three in terms of the overall impact people. I think what has happened is that more of the routine transactional activities move to digital, but good, high-quality advice never goes out of style. It’s still what people want, and frankly, what they need.

The value-add is no longer, “Can I check my balance at any time of day” That’s now a commodity. What’s not a commodity is helping me think through the business challenges I have and what tools I need to manage my cash flow better, to think about volatility and revenue, and how I can weather those storms. That’s the higher value added work that we spend much more time on.

There’s still plenty of businesses that do cash and coin, that need notaries, that need all kinds of local, in-house advice. If you’re sending a really big wire, sometimes you really want to do it in person, because you don’t want to enable your phone to do that, and I get that. Safety and security is a big part of that as well. The mistake has been thinking in terms of bricks or clicks. It’s both.

Q: How does Chase help a small business compared to a smaller institution?

A: I don’t want to throw shade on smaller institutions, because they have a role to play, too. I’m very cautious about sort of saying, “Oh, now Chase is here. Everything’s fine.” We have a lot of really strong competitors, and that’s a good thing. One of the things that distinguishes the U.S. economy from other mature economies around the world is we have 5,000 banks across this country. How many does Canada have? Like four. It’s a nice country, but they have like four banks. I lived in the UK for a while, there’s basically four banks.

I think it’s one of the things that makes this country more dynamic. I think there are things that small banks can do that we can’t do and, by the way, we fund some of those banks,  and that’s okay. We can bring our balance sheet, we can bring our digital capabilities, we can bring our heft, we can bring our brand. I think it’s valuable people trust that that won’t solve every problem, but Boston’s better off for having that than not.

Walter’s Five Favorites Grateful Dead Songs

• “Scarlet Begonias”
• “The Wheel”
• “Bertha”
• “I Know You Rider”
• “Ripple”