Dive Brief:
- JPMorgan Chase has joined a growing list of major U.S. banks to depart the United Nations-backed Net Zero Banking Alliance, a bank spokesperson confirmed to ESG Dive Tuesday.
- The bank’s departure, first reported by Reuters, comes a week after Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley announced their exits from NZBA and less than a month after Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo ended their memberships in the group.
- The JPMorgan spokesperson said the bank would continue to work with the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which recently announced its plans to refocus its work on mobilizing capital this year.
Dive Insight:
With JPMorgan’s departure, five of the six largest U.S. commercial banks by assets have exited NZBA in the past month, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
Only three U.S.-based banks remain in NZBA — Amalgamated Bank, Climate First Bank and Areti Bank — according to the group’s membership list. Amalgamated is the 158th largest U.S. bank by assets, and Climate First is the 984th, according to the Fed; Areti was not among the 2,151 banks with more than $300 million in combined assets at the end of September.
The spate of NZBA defections comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office with a Republican majority in both the House and Senate. The membership withdrawals also come after House Republicans spent the past two years probing such climate alliances for potential antitrust and consumer protection law violations.
“We will continue to work independently to advance the interests of our Firm, our shareholders and our clients and remain focused on pragmatic solutions to help further low-carbon technologies while advancing energy security,” a JPMorgan spokesperson said in a statement. “We will also continue to support the banking and investment needs of our clients who are engaged in energy transition and in decarbonizing different sectors of the economy.”
All of the recently defecting NZBA members were targeted by state Republican-led probes in the past few years. Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo were all probed by 14 Republican state attorneys general about their membership in 2022 and 12 Republican heads of agriculture last year about their membership status in the group.
Despite leaving NZBA, JPMorgan is now at least the third recently departed bank to say it will also maintain engagement with GFANZ, which is the UN-backed umbrella organization for NZBA and other climate-focused alliances in the financial sector. Citi and Bank of America also reiterated their commitment to GFANZ in statements to ESG Dive last week.
The JPMorgan spokesperson said the bank will continue working with GFANZ, “among others,” on advancing solutions and the market conditions that “can help further a low-carbon and energy-secure future.”
The continued commitment to working with GFANZ follows a Jan. 2 announcement from the group’s secretariat Mary Schapiro that the alliance will restructure and turn its attention to “mobilizing [climate] finance through public-private partnerships.”
Schapiro said the group had “achieved its initial goal of developing the building blocks” of a financial system able to finance the net-zero transition, and will now look to close the financing gap.
Under the restructuring, the alliance will engage through an independent “Principals Group,” led by CEOs and financial institution leaders, according to Schapiro’s letter. The Principals Group includes Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser and BofA CEO Brian Moynihan, as well as BlackRock CEO and Chair Larry Fink and State Street CEO and Chair Ron O’Hanley, among others.
