No. 12: Eileen Serra, JPMorgan Chase

Eileen Serra
CEO of Chase Card Services, JPMorgan Chase

The card business is facing intense scrutiny and regulatory pressure, but Eileen Serra is turning those challenges into opportunities to improve.

She made enhancing the compliance capabilities at Chase Card Services a top priority, hiring a chief controls officer, redeploying 300 employees to focus on the heightened controls effort and evaluating all of its processes. This involved putting other projects on hold and even closing several product lines, but the effects of streamlining the business have been so positive that some of these activities are being replicated elsewhere within JPMorgan Chase.

The results have been not only improved compliance, but all-time highs in customer satisfaction. There are now dramatically fewer issues affecting customers, and simplifying and automating processes improved their overall experience. Chase is the highest-rated Visa and MasterCard issuer in J.D. Power's 2014 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Study and had the largest gains of any card company over a three-year period. It ranked third overall, behind American Express and Discover.

Chase Card Services' business has 20,000 employees, serves 50 million customers and handled $420 billion in transactions last year. In 2013, Serra's first full year as CEO, new account openings increased 9%, sales volume went up 10% and net chargeoffs fell 4%.

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