JPMorgan buys digital wealth firm Nutmeg for UK expansion

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy U.K. digital wealth manager Nutmeg Saving and Investment as it seeks to expand its mobile banking service for retail investors in the country.

Nutmeg has more than 140,000 customers and manages over 3.5 billion pounds ($4.9 billion) of assets, according to a statement from the U.S. bank Thursday. JPMorgan’s digital bank Chase will be launched in the U.K. later this year, it said.

The deal values Nutmeg at close to 700 million pounds, according to people familiar with the matter. The U.S. bank didn’t disclose how much it paid.

“We are building Chase in the U.K. from scratch using the very latest technology and putting the customer’s experience at the heart of our offering, principles that Nutmeg shares with us,” Sanoke Viswanathan, chief executive officer of JPMorgan’s International Consumer division, said in the statement.

The U.K. digital move has been planned for more than two years as part of a closely-guarded project. The biggest U.S. bank gets almost 50% of its revenue from a consumer business that has operated only in the U.S., though the firm has long deliberated whether to bring its offerings to the rest of the world.

In the U.S., Chase offers a range of banking products to more than 56 million digital customers, according to Thursday’s statement.

— Stefania Spezzati, Bloomberg Mercury