Four takeaways from JPMorgan's kickoff to earnings season

• Key insight: JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank sees "huge opportunities" to grow, including through its recent acquisition of the Apple card relationship.
• What's at stake: JPMorgan and other banks that have large credit card businesses are suddenly playing defense, after President Trump called for a one-year, 10% cap on interest.
• Forward look: JPMorgan expects to invest about $105 billion on growth initiatives in 2026, up from $96 billion last year.

While JPMorganChase 's earnings growth slowed at the end of last year, the bank has big investment plans to fuel its performance in 2026 and beyond.

Amid shifts in the regulatory tides and the economic environment, America's largest bank will boost its spending to take advantage of opportunities it sees for technology, fee businesses and consumer relationships.

While the bank reported Tuesday that its profits fell about 7% in the fourth quarter from the prior year, CEO Jamie Dimon said the U.S. economy has remained resilient. He added that consumers are still spending, and businesses "generally remain healthy."

JPMorgan reeled in $13 billion in net income during the fourth quarter, or $4.63 in diluted earnings per share, missing the consensus analyst estimate of $4.91.

The bank's stock was down 3.8% on Tuesday afternoon.

Here is a look at four major areas of focus from JPMorgan's quarterly report, which kicked off bank earnings season on Tuesday.

Playing both offense and defense on credit cards

JPMorgan's lower-than-expected bottom line was largely due to a one-time, $2.2 billion provision for credit loss related to JPMorgan's latest move to tread deeper into the credit card business.

Last week, the company said it will replace Goldman Sachs as the banking platform for Apple's $20 billion portfolio of credit card offerings.

"We remain committed to investing our capital to drive future growth, and the Apple Card is one example of patient and thoughtful deployment of our excess capital into attractive opportunities," Dimon said in a prepared statement Tuesday.

Excluding the Apple card deal, JPMorgan's reserve build was flat from the prior quarter, and the company's adjusted earnings per share were $5.23.

Barnum said on a Tuesday call with analysts that the Apple deal was "economically compelling." He added that Apple is a leader in payments, innovation and user experience.

The transition from Goldman to JPMorgan will take 24 months to complete, due to what Barnum called a challenging integration. JPMorgan is confident that the transition will be successful, he added.

"I think the process of getting it done, in the narrow sense, is going to make us better," Barnum said, adding that he expects it to "just generally accelerate and challenge our modernization agenda and the user friendliness of everything that we do in the card business."

The Apple card business equates to about 8% of the company's total credit card loans at the bank.

But the credit card industry in general may be entering a rough patch.

Last week, President Donald Trump called on credit card issuers to cap interest rates at 10% for one year, which would mark a massive shift to the economics of the business. Most of JPMorgan's dozens of credit cards offer rates between about 18% and 28%, according to disclosures on the bank's website.

Barnum declined to quantify how a 10% cap could impact the bank, but said that, broadly, the shift would be "very bad for consumers, very bad for the economy," and "it should be obvious that that would also be bad for us."

Because of the competitive nature of the card business, interest rate controls that compress profit margins would mean that "people will lose access to credit, like on a very, very extensive and broad basis, especially the people who need it the most, ironically," Barnum said.

Barnum declined to answer a question about what the nature of JPMorgan's interactions with the U.S. government have been like on the topic.

Defending Federal Reserve independence

After friction between the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve entered new ground this week, Dimon reiterated his belief that monetary policy shouldn't be dictated by the president.

The Trump administration has launched a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell over his testimony related to renovations of the Fed's headquarters. The Justice Department served grand jury subpoenas to the Fed on Friday.

"While I don't agree with everything the Fed has done, I do have enormous respect for Jay Powell," Dimon told media members Tuesday morning. "Everyone we know believes in Fed independence … and anything that chips away at that is probably not a great idea. And in my view, it will have the reverse consequences — it will raise inflation expectations and probably increase rates over time."

Barnum added that the loss of an independent Fed would raise concerns about damage to American economic prospects and global economic stability.

"The broad market narrative here is that loss of Fed independence tends to lead to steeper yield curves and other damage to ongoing economic dynamism," Barnum said. "As a company, of course, we manage our yield curve risk very carefully, and so I wouldn't think that that would be the first thing we would worry about."

Dimon has previously defended Powell, calling Fed's independence "absolutely critical" in remarks last summer.

Justifying expense growth

JPMorgan is expecting its expenses to rise by about $9 billion in 2026, to roughly $105 billion, as it invests in employees, branches, technology and marketing. The bank, which has $4.4 trillion of assets, offered the guidance for this year's spending last month, but it provided more details Tuesday about how those expenses might break down.

Bankers, advisors and branch investments will drive about $3 billion, or one-third, of the increase in expenses, which Barnum said reflects long-term confidence in the company.

Some expenses, which come from volume and revenue-related activities, are what the bank calls "good expenses," Barnum said. Some of the uptick in spending reflects JPMorgan's optimism about the fee environment across investment banking and asset management, he said, though he did temper that confidence.

"We're a little bit cautious about market appreciation drivers given where we're launching from, and given the type of year that it's been this year," Barnum said. "It's a little bit of a balanced story, I would say, in terms of fee outlook for 2026. Not for any particularly negative reason, but just because 2025 was so exceptionally strong."

Dimon declined to specify the level of returns the bank anticipates from each of its investments, but said the spending "would be justified by the results."

"We see huge opportunities," Dimon said. "We're opening rural branches. … We're opening more branches in foreign countries. We're building better payment systems. We're adding better personalization in consumer banking, credit card. We're adding AI across the company."

Shedding more light on loans to nonbank financial institutions

After several banks reported major losses from loans to nonbank financial institutions in the fall, JPMorgan provided more detail Tuesday about its book of loans to non-traditional financial institutions.

In 2025, regulators redefined NBFI categories, which meant the already fast-growing sector looked like it grew even faster in the last year than it did. JPMorgan's definition is narrower, focused on "exposure to NBFIs that is collateralized by the loans that those entities are making to end-borrowers," Barnum said.

Using the bank's definition implies that its NBFI portfolio is roughly half the size that it measures when it uses the regulatory definition. The bank has more than $332 billion of loans to nonbank entities, it said, but the company's own definition leaves it with only about $160 billion.

By any definition, that loan book has scaled significantly in recent years. Per the bank's adjustment, its NBFI loans have more than tripled since 2018.

"As we've been talking about for the last couple of years, there's no reason that we can't compete head-to-head in that space," Barnum said.

Dimon and Barnum both pointed to certain capital requirements and leveraged lending rules that have driven the sector's growth.

Regulators have made moves in recent months to roll back some of those rules, which some analysts have said may dampen some NBFI loan growth in 2026.

Since 2018, JPMorgan has only seen one charge-off in its portfolio. That was from the alleged fraud that came to light amid the collapse of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings in the fall.

Barnum said Tuesday that "given the structural protections" of NBFI loans, the bank would expect any losses to be the result of either fraud or a deep recession that would cause bigger problems with direct lending.

Dimon said on the call with analysts that the bank's NBFI business is an arbitrage, since those loans can be better for banks' regulatory capital positions than making loans directly.

Barnum added that the company also aims to provide what its customers want.

"That's why we really leaned into this whole product-agnostic strategy that we talk about," Barnum said. "And at the same time, in the cases where we don't wind up being a lender, yes, sometimes we're competing with these folks. Sometimes they're our clients. Sometimes they're both."