Walker Webcast: Mary Callahan Erdoes — Global Pressures and Corporate Philosophy

Today’s news and events continue to create swirls of uncertainty. The Russia-Ukraine war rages on, while COVID-19 variants keep infecting populations.

And during the April 20, 2022 Walker Webcast, J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management CEO Mary Callahan Erdoes was upfront about current issues and their impact on the financial markets.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a war (close to Europe),” Erdoes told Walker & Dunlop Chairman and CEO Willy Walker. She explained that geopolitical events, in general, don’t exert a long-term impact on markets. That is, unless severe commodity disruptions take place. Which is currently happening with oil prices, supply and demand.

“Everything that you think about in terms of pricing stability is out the window right now,” Erdoes said. Even that won’t exert a huge impact, unless current situations continue, unabated.

But world crisis situations aren’t new. “It’s how you think about it, view it and prepare for it is what matters,” she commented. Specifically, “the job is to always prepare for the worst and hope for the best. If you it the other way around, you’ll get into big trouble,” she explained.

How is J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management preparing? Erdoes said she and her staff are working hard on behalf of clients and companies, with a focus on risk management and making sure all portfolios are in shape to weather the various global situations.

This, in turn, is assisted by her teamwork-focused philosophy, one based on conducting first-class business in a first-class way. The goal isn’t for the asset management firm to be the biggest, but rather, the best; many times, being the best can help lead to being the biggest. However, “if you turn that around and say, ‘we strive to be the biggest,’ there’s little chance to be the best,” Erdoes said.

Erdoes indicated that another important goal is to be the solution provider and provider of advice to clients. To get there, “we hire great, young talent, we train them – you could say we ‘JP morganize’ them,” she commented.

Just as important is keeping an eye on the competition. According to Erdoes, everybody is a competitor, every day. While large companies are the obvious competitors, the ones to worry about are “the ones you don’t know about, who are in the garage, making things much cheaper, quicker, faster and easier to use than you are,” she said. Because of this, it’s important to consistently search for new talent—and even new organizations.

Other topics included community investment and corporate diversity, as well as the number of women who are making finance a career. Erdoes told Walker that when she first joined J.P. Morgan Chase in the late 1990s, the idea of taking time off in the middle of the day to attend a kid’s soccer match would have been out of the question. “No one could reach you,” she said. “So that didn’t fly.”

Things have changed these days, thanks to technology and the ability to work remotely, things have changed. Erdoes acknowledged that not all industries have benefited, however. “The narrative has to be inclusive when we’re thinking about manufacturing and services jobs, so we don’t leave any one sector behind that isn’t able to have flexibility. A lot of thinking has to be done on that front,” she said.

But she allowed that she’s excited about the future and opportunities for her three girls, all because of technology. “Technology changed everything,” she commented. “Then COVID really changed everything.”