JPMorgan Chase &Â Co. is building on its acquisition of Washington Mutual Bank and expanding its presence in the Golden State.
Chase announced Monday that it plans to open around 100 California branches this year. The additions will bring its California bank branch count to more than 900.
JPMorgan inherited a vast West Coast network of bank branches with its September 2008 acquisition of WaMu (parent Washington Mutual Inc. was not acquired by JPMorgan and filed for bankruptcy). At the time of its demise, Seattle-based WaMu had 43,000 employees working from 2,200 branches in 15 states.
The majority of this year’s new branch openings — 65 — will be in Southern California, while 20 branches will be opened in Northern California and 15 will be established in the Central Valley.
As part of the expansion, the company plans to add more than 1,500 jobs.
A spokesman said that some of the positions being added are “mortgage officers.”
But “the vast majority of the jobs are branch jobs, including branch manager, assistant manager, personal banker and business banker.”
Including mortgage positions, Chase employs 12,000 people at its California branches.
“California is one of Chase’s high-priority growth markets, and we plan to invest significantly in the people, facilities and technology needed to serve California consumers and businesses well,” Pablo Sanchez, who is head of Chase’s western branch network, said in the statement. “We are creating many jobs, including construction workers to build the branches, vendors to provide services to Chase and, most importantly, branch employees to help our customers with their financial needs.”
