JPMorgan Chase & Co. has taken the final step in a companywide retail branch conversion stemming from its July 2004 acquisition of Bank One Corp.
The final phase converted 476 branches in the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area, or 4.7 million accounts, last weekend without any major problems, said Charles W. Scharf, JPMorgan Chase's head of retail banking.
"New Yorkers are always extremely vocal customers," but the complaints he expected did not materialize, Mr. Scharf said Thursday.
JPMorgan Chase, which had retail operations only in the tri-state area and Texas before buying Bank One, converted all those customers to Bank One's computer system, which it says is superior.
The conversion started Friday and ended Sunday, and by Tuesday the event was forgotten, he said. "If we had real issues, we'd know about them. People would be talking about it," Mr. Scharf said. The only glitches were minor ones common in conversions, he said.
JPMorgan Chase's was the second major branch conversion this month in New York. Sovereign Bancorp Inc. of Philadelphia, which bought Independence Community Bank Corp. of Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 1, converted the 126 Independence branches to Sovereign's system and name in a three-day span starting Sept. 8.
Alan H. Fishman, the chief executive of Sovereign Bancorp's New York market, said Thursday that there were minor issues but no furious customer calls and no delays, and so far there has been no customer attrition.
"It was absolutely remarkable" given the scope of the project, Mr. Fishman said.
JPMorgan Chase ended a two-part process that included switching the Bank One name to the Chase brand and converting the Chase system to Bank One's. It began changing signs in April 2005 in Kentucky and finished in April of this year in Michigan. In September and October it completed both sign and system conversions on 400 retail branches in Texas.
The New York project was trickier because of its size and "because the products we had in the tri-state area from Chase were more complex," Mr. Scharf said.
In a memo to JPMorgan Chase's staff Thursday, chief executive James Dimon wrote: "It was the most complex conversion our company has ever tackled - and one of the three or four largest in banking history. It involved $72 billion in deposits, hundreds of thousands of programming and testing hours, and 300,000 hours of training for 9,000 employees. We also eliminated 50 systems."
Mr. Scharf said, "Doing this well, for us, is a big deal."
JPMorgan Chase is not entirely done integrating Bank One. Next year it will convert the New York commercial banking system.
Another conversion looms. JPMorgan Chase is expected to complete a swap of its corporate trust business for Bank of New York Co. Inc.'s retail banking business before the year is out; the conversion of those 338 branches would happen in spring 2007, a spokesman said.
Both JPMorgan Chase and Sovereign used a "buddy system," where the employees of a branch to be converted team up with the management of a branch that operates on the new system. Branch managers visit one another to study the respective systems, and the manager from the experienced branch stays at the new location for the conversion.
Sovereign branch managers from as far away as Salem, Mass., stayed up to two weeks with their new colleagues in New York, Mr. Fishman said.
