JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said marketplace lenders might find that sources of funding evaporate during a downturn.
"If they have to borrow in the marketplace with individuals, hedge funds or securitized markets, they won't be there in tough times," Dimon, who leads the biggest bank by assets, said Wednesday in an interview on CNBC. "And that's their problem. Not the other side of it. You saw that in January and February, you saw a lot of them looking for diversified sources of funding."
Marketplace lenders including LendingClub Corp. and On Deck Capital Inc., which match borrowers with creditors who want to finance them over the Internet, have been under pressure as investor demand for their loans wavered. LendingClub said Monday its founder and chief executive officer, Renaud Laplanche, resigned after an internal review found altered dates on some loans and that the CEO failed to disclose his interests in a fund in which LendingClub was considering investing.
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Maybe disruptors, not bankers, are the ones who need to worry about an abrupt paradigm shift. Though many bankers fear having fintech startups pick off the most profitable parts of their business, history suggests this "unbundling" of banks is a recurring, temporary phenomenon that is generally followed by a period of "rebundling."
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Dimon, who said he was in Silicon Valley with his management team meeting technology companies, said the banking industry could learn from upstarts. JPMorgan has partnered with On Deck to use its technology to offer small-business loans to the bank's customers.
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"I think some of these online lenders are quite good at what they're doing," Dimon said. "They're quite good in Silicon Valley not just with technology, but also making it simpler for the customer. Going online and getting a loan in 15 minutes as opposed to 15 days through a bank."
Separately, Dimon, 60, said that economic conditions had improved from the start of the year.
"We see there's plenty of activity now, bond markets seem to be rather wide open, there's a lot of M&A chatter," Dimon said. "It's obviously far better in April and May than it was in January and February."
