Even after having looks for this information several times I get confused on who regulates Chase or any other bank. The best place to start is here, the SEC’s website which describes what regulators do what. That site will point you here, at the FDIC where you can search for the regulator for a specific bank. According to that site, JPMorgan Chase Bank National Association is listed with 5,497 branch offices, so it is probably the correct one. The regulator is listed as the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the proper place to file a complaint is here.
However, the banks holding company, JPMorgan Chase & Co is regulated by the Federal Reserve, according to this and many other sites. At the bottom of Chase’s website, it says JPMorgan Chase & Co. You can file a complaint with the Federal Reserve here.
To be safe, if you want to file a complaint against Chase Bank I would do so at both places.
An article in the Wall Street Journal today fails to close the books on WaMu’s failure/seizure, but instead continues to raise the question that WaMu might have been seized prematurely. Striking is the fact that documents related to the seizure obtained by the WSJ were heavily redacted and provided little information into actually what went on. The article also presents the image that JP Morgan Chase was essentially stalking WaMu. Truly striking though is the image that there still has been no clear cut impetus for the seizure presented by those involved.
Given how JP Morgan Chase continues to treat its customers, it is very believable that it believes it can do whatever it wants and had an active hand in determining WaMu’s fate before it was seized.
Here are some tips from the blog Lifehacker for finding a new personal small bank.
This article is a must-read for anyone going through a loan modification with some useful tips. Among them are don’t take the banks word that you should stop paying your mortgage to qualify for a loan modification; only do so after you have in writing that if you stop payments you will not be foreclosed upon as a result. Attorney Melissa Huelsman, subject of the article strongly believes that JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon would rather spend money fighting rather than working out solutions, and that Chase is the only large bank that will not consider principle reduction.
Update 4/13/10: This stance against principle reduction was reiterated in today’s testimony before congress. The bottom line, they don’t think customers deserve to have their principle reduced because they entered into a contract and should be held to it. What about all the fraudulent and abusive sub-prime loans?
Looks like the big banks, including Chase aren’t out of the water yet, no matter how much they may be tooting their own horns lately. According to this article in Business Week, BofA, Chase, and Wells Fargo combined may need to set aside an additional $30 billion in reserves to cover potential loses from home equity (HELOC) loans. We haven’t heard much about HELOC losses but in many cases the loan can get wiped out 100% from a short sale or foreclosure as the loans are secondary to the 1st mortgage.
With a draft of the report on WaMu’s failure in hand, the New York Times has produced an article about WaMu’s failure. Seems that the two regulators who were supposed to be, you know, regulating the bank, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the FDIC, were in a bitter feud over whether WaMu was messed up or not. They only declared the bank unsound a week before it was seized and sold off to JP Morgan Chase.
Seems to me that this could add some fuel to the argument that WaMu was seized improperly.
Bankaholic did a comparison of a Chase cash back loan (which gives you back 1% of each years mortgage payments) with comparable 30 year fixed mortgages from other banks and found that they were no deal given all the Chase cash-back loans came with 1% in up-front points.
But I probably could have told you that without any analysis. 1% is an incredible small amount to get back. Let’s say you pay roughly $3,000 in interest per month or $36,000 per year, that would get you only $360 back at the end of the year.
You deposit a check into your account at Chase. They claim it will take 10 days to clear. But the person who wrote the check shows the funds debited after 4 days. Hmm. Why is Chase holding onto the money for an extra 6 days.
Legal & regulatory | admin April 13, 2010 | 
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