JPMorgan's Chase to open up to 90 branches in new U.S. markets

(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co's consumer banking unit said on Wednesday it will open up to 90 branches in new U.S. markets, in the face of intensifying competition for loans and deposits among the country's three biggest banks. JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp, and Wells Fargo & Co are nip and tuck in deposits. Bank of America, in early 2018, had decided to open more than 500 new branches across the United States by 2021. Chase said it will also hire up to 700 employees in the markets, which include Charlotte, North Carolina; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from this summer. The company will also open some of these branches in the cities of Philadelphia, Boston and the Greater Washington area in the District of Columbia - markets it recently entered into. JPMorgan had said last year that it was planning to open 400 new branches, of which 30 percent would cater to low-to-moderate income communities, and hire as many as 3,000 employees in new markets over the next five years. In its latest quarterly report, JPMorgan showed that consumer and community banking deposits grew 3 percent to $673.78 billion. JPM's Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake said last month that she expects growth in deposits to slow and the interest it pays for them to rise, reducing profit margins on its loans. Shares of JPMorgan were up 0.7 percent in noon trading amid a rise in broader markets. (Reporting by Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)