ECB Hits JPMorgan With Central Bank’s Biggest Fine

The European Central Bank said Thursday it had fined JPMorgan 12.2 million euros ($14.4 million) for misreporting risk, the largest fine so far levied by the institution.

Finding that the US investment bank had between 2019 and 2024 misclassified some transactions and excluded others from its calculations, the ECB said JPMorgan had reported that its capital buffers were bigger than they actually were.

“The bank committed both breaches with serious negligence, driven by evident deficiencies in its internal processes,” the ECB said in a statement.

“The bank’s internal controls did not detect the breaches in a timely manner,” it added.

Banks are required to keep a certain amount of cash or highly liquid assets on their books in proportion to the amount of risky holdings they have.

Artificially lowering the proportion of risky assets on its books would have freed up cash for JPMorgan to invest in other areas.

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The ECB last week fined French bank Credit Agricole 7.55 million euros ($9 million) for being too slow to evaluate its climate change-related risk in response to a request from the central bank.

A spokesperson for JPMorgan said in a statement sent to AFP that “we acknowledge that the ECB has issued a fine to JPMorgan SE of 12.18 million euros related to capital reporting requirements.

“JPMorgan SE proactively identified and self-reported the issues, which have now been fully remediated.”

The investment bank added that it had “consistently maintained strong capital buffers” and that “our robust, prudent approach to capitalisation remains unchanged”.

AFP