This was due to management's particularly cautious expectations. In 2024, management expects to see what all analysts have been waiting for for months: a contraction in net interest margins after eighteen months of easy money.

Like the other major American - and European - banks, JPMorgan was quick to raise its lending rates in response to the rise in interest rates. on the other hand, it has been much more timid in increasing the return on its customers' deposits.

The result has been a particularly juicy net interest margin over the last six quarters. By the end of 2023, for example, it had doubled from its level at the end of 2020.

But customers are no longer fooled, and are now demanding adequate returns. This is the message from JPMorgan's management at the end of the first quarter of the 2024 financial year.

Banks can offset the rising cost of deposits by growing their lending business. The problem is that, unlike deposits, high interest rates dampen demand.

This is particularly evident in France and Germany, where it has frozen the market for private real estate. In North America, for the time being, it is mainly commercial real estate that is suffering.

For the first time in a long time, JPMorgan has observed a downturn in the volume of loans granted, which has fallen sharply after a long sequence of uninterrupted expansion. At the same time, the cost of deposits has risen by one hundred basis points over the same period last year, from 1.85% to 2.85%.