Retrench and retreat may be words that describe many financial executives' mission statements right now, but not so for Melissa Moore. The chief executive of JPMorgan's Treasury Services business pushed through with a $1 billion investment to broaden the group's global service capabilities.
It was a year ago when Moore announced the ambitious three-year investment. She credits the expansion effort with helping the unit amass $934 million in net revenues in the second quarter, a 9.6 percent hike over the same period last year, and allowing Treasury Services to set records for single-day clearing value ($5.05 trillion) and single-day clearing volume (59 percent over its daily average without incident). The group manages an average 300,000 U.S. dollar electronic transactions per day with a total value of about $2 trillion.
"That level of investment and the ability to continue with that plan despite everything that was happening, I think is really important because it's super strategic for this business," Moore says.
In the past year JPMorgan has opened several new branches in China, with plans to open more in China and South Asia next year. It also launched a standard billing platform for improved management and reporting, introduced escrow services in several new countries, expanded network and branch capabilities abroad, and has invested in a fully integrated liquidity platform that will provide Web capabilities that allow clients to better manage their cash concentration structures and time deposit investments.
Internally, Moore has made sure that her staff has remained very hands-on with clients. During a time of extreme anxiety, it was imperative, she says, to very quickly start outreach. "You had to go through your entire client base - client by client by client - in a very short period of time. Normally things are phased in a little bit more," she says.
