JPMorgan Chase upped its stake in Brazilian digital bank C6 from 40% to 46%, C6 announced Tuesday.
The financial terms of the investment have not been disclosed.
C6 has seen its client base grow from 8 million to 25 million since June 2021, when JPMorgan bought its initial slice.
The neobank has added more products in that time, including auto loans. Its credit portfolio has also increased from 9.5 billion Brazilian reals ($1.96 billion) to 40 billion ($8.2 billion), C6 said.
"Our strategic investment in C6 Bank is an important part of JPMorgan Chase's global digital banking strategy," Sanoke Viswanathan, head of strategy and growth and CEO of international retail banking at JPMorgan, said in a prepared statement. “The rapid growth in customers, products and balance sheet demonstrates the success of C6 Bank's approach. We are happy to reinforce our commitment to this partnership.”
The banks said that they are working together to develop new products but did not elaborate on what those products might be.
C6 launched a TV and radio campaign Wednesday to inform its customers of JPMorgan’s increased backing and what that means for customers, according to a separate announcement.
“More and more, we want to communicate to our customers the benefits of having an innovative bank that has as a partner one of the main leaders in financial services in the world,” Alexandra Pain, C6’s chief marketing officer, said in a prepared statement.
JPMorgan made more than 30 acquisitions and investments in 2021, the year it bought into C6, according to Reuters. Many of those investments were overseas or in banking-adjacent businesses because regulations prohibit JPMorgan from acquiring additional U.S.-based deposit-taking institutions. In September 2021 alone, JPMorgan launched a digital bank in the U.K., bought a majority stake in Volkswagen’s payments business and announced it would purchase the ill-fated college-aid planning site Frank and the restaurant platform that owns the Zagat guidebook.
While notches in its 2023 belt haven’t been as plentiful, they’ve been notable and marked by crisis (aversion): JPMorgan assumed most of First Republic Bank’s assets following its springtime failure, taking in roughly $173 billion in loans, $30 billion in securities and $92 billion in deposits; and purchased $1.8 billion in single-family residential loans from Banc of California to facilitate the latter's purchase of PacWest Bancorp.
