Listen to this articleThe basics:
- J.P. Morgan Private Bank appoints Kevin Morrison and Pete Donchez to lead the NJ market
- Summit office renovated to 35,000 square feet with major expansion plans
- Private Bank expects to hire 150 employees in NJ over five years
- Firm oversees $2.6 trillion in global client assets and aims to grow statewide market share
J.P. Morgan Private Bank is continuing its expansion here in the Garden State, recently appointing two longtime executives and team members, Kevin Morrison and Pete Donchez, to lead the New Jersey market.
The bank renovated and expanded its office space in Summit in 2024, providing 35,000 square feet with a state-of-the-art Client Center and more. The space will celebrate its 10-year anniversary in 2026. Over the past seven years, the team has doubled in size — and the Private Bank plans to add 150 employees here over the next five years.
J.P. Morgan Private Bank offers customized financial advice to help wealthy clients and their families achieve their goals. Clients work with dedicated teams of specialists who bring investments and financial assets together into one comprehensive strategy. For the individual markets, such as New Jersey, it offers the unique opportunity to leverage the resources and scale of J.P. Morgan but with a local, more personal touch.
The Private Bank arm of J.P. Morgan oversees more than $2.6 trillion in client assets globally. JPMorgan Chase itself has served New Jersey for more than 185 years. The company boasts more than 12,000 employees and serves more than 3 million consumer and business customers across the state.
Morrison has co-led the New Jersey market for the past nine years as the head of investments and advice. In this new role, he will lead a team of more than 90 bankers, wealth strategists, and financial specialists who provide comprehensive guidance across investing, philanthropy, family office management, credit, fiduciary services and more.
Donchez has been a key member of the New Jersey group since joining as an associate in 2012, and will succeed Morrison as New Jersey head of investment & advice. Donchez has been instrumental in leading the growth of the investment business, which has doubled over the last five years. He will lead a team of 20 investment specialists who are responsible for $40 billion in client assets.
‘Raising the standard’
With Morrison and Donchez in these key leadership roles, the Private Bank is poised for a big 2026 – and beyond.
“At J.P. Morgan Private Bank, our commitment is to deliver an elevated private banking experience shaped entirely around our clients’ ambitions,” said Morrison. “With our growth in the market, we’re raising the standard in private banking, offering comprehensive guidance and opening doors to new opportunities for clients across New Jersey.
“Our team is dedicated to helping clients build, preserve, and transfer their wealth, while adding meaningful values to their lives. We’re proud to serve New Jersey’s families and businesses, leveraging the global resources of J.P. Morgan to help them realize the full possibilities their wealth creates.”
NJBIZ recently spoke with Morrison and Donchez about the new roles, the year that was and the one ahead, trends they are seeing and more.
“I’ve been with JPMorgan for 15 years. Started with the firm in New York – and in 2016, when they opened this office here in Summit, N.J., I moved out with the team to lead investments, which I did for the last nine years,” Morrison told NJBIZ. “Earlier this year, moved into the market manager seat, which I’m overseeing now. Kind of a partnership where the market manager and the head of investments, which is now Pete, co-lead the market for the Private Bank in the State of New Jersey.”
“I’ve been with the firm for about 15 years, always in a capital markets role,” Donchez told NJBIZ. “I started my career at the Private Bank in our international business. I came to our U.S. business a couple of years after that. So, I’ve been on this team for about the better part of the last 12-and-a-half, 13 years. Always in that capital markets role with the understanding and the opportunity to deliver the firm’s investment acumen to our clients. And that’s meant something different for every client.
“It means something different every day – because the world changes every day.”
Looking ahead: Market trends
The pair also discussed the trends and market dynamics they see developing.
“I think 2025 was a year of uncertainty and change – that investors had to adapt to kind of a new world order as it relates to geopolitics, as it relates to trade, and then come to grips with the fact that maybe interest rates and inflation will remain slightly elevated going forward than they have been in the past,” Donchez explained. “And that created a whole set of uncertainties for clients.
“Maybe the things that have worked over the past five to 10 years might not work going forward,” he continued, pointing out that a big part of 2025 has been, as markets recovered from April downturns, re-educating clients on where things are and where the firm believes things are going. “Which I think is a promising track. I think AI stands to generate incredible efficiency gains and productivity gains in the economy.
“But people are equal parts excited about what that could mean for companies and earnings – and them, individually. As well as being equal parts scared about: What does that mean about labor and labor markets and labor disruption? So, a lot of our job the last few months has been educational, just talking to clients about what we’re seeing in the world – and how their portfolios are positioned, and those changes we might want to make.”
“Who would have thought the markets would have done as well as they have this year, in spite of all the disruption and certainty in the first quarter and into April,” said Morrison. “Everybody bumped up their recession probabilities. It had almost become like a foregone conclusion that the global economy was going to roll over, given the pressure of tariffs.
Who would have thought the markets would have done as well as they have this year, in spite of all the disruption and certainty in the first quarter and into April.
– Kevin Morrison, J.P. Morgan Private Bank
“But it is just another indication of the underlying power of economic growth and innovation in the economy – that even a policy shock like that can tend to be short-lived. Obviously, there were changes to that policy over time and continue to be. But I think the underlying engine of growth remains. And as Pete said, the power of AI and the potential for that to supercharge growth and productivity and efficiencies of business, I think, is a stronger force than those policy disruptions.”
‘Everybody wants to adopt AI’
The discussion continued around AI and the rapid evolution of the technology and the investments behind it, particularly since the 2022 launch of ChatGPT.
“And those numbers are growing by the hundreds of billions of dollars in terms of expected data center and infrastructure spend,” said Donchez. “Just as we move through the earnings season. And we’re seeing that with our clients. We’re seeing that with our clients who are business owners, our clients who are investors. Everybody wants to adopt AI.
“Everybody wants to capture the AI-driven productivity gains that are promised. Easier said than done. I think value creation is not necessarily value capture.”
He continued, “That promise of productivity gains, but figuring out how to invest behind it and how to capture it – it has really been what’s driving our clients’ attention. As a firm, we spend an incredible amount of money on technology, and that’s from cybersecurity to AI. As advisors, the spend that we’ve done and the adoption of some of these tools that AI powers have been incredibly powerful for our business. It’s made us more efficient. It gives us insight into client portfolios that we didn’t have previously.
“It certainly makes us better practitioners – and, ultimately, that will create better outcomes.”
NJ: Millionaire central
So, what do the two bankers hope to accomplish going forward and how would they measure success?
“Both of us have been on this team for a long time – and Pete moved into an official leadership position. But was in a leadership position, just by his tenure and experience and talent,” said Morrison. “I’d say for us, we see tremendous opportunity for growth in New Jersey. I’m sure you know the state – that New Jersey has the highest concentration of millionaire households of any state in the country – nearly 1 in 10.
“We’re targeting an even higher level of wealth to work with families in the Private Bank. Although our firm covers the entire spectrum of that. But we estimate that we can double our market share in the $10 million and above space over the next seven to 10 years. We’ll do that just by continuing to be out there with our message and talking to more and more families and wealthy people,” Morrison continued.
“But we’ll also do it by hiring more advisors. That’s a big goal of ours – is to continue to look for world-class advisors that want to work as part of a world-class team. And we’ve already seen the benefits of that. Our team has nearly doubled over the last seven years – and that includes advisors. But also in terms of the assets that we manage and our business as a whole.
“We’re really excited about the growth opportunity here in this state – we’re in a real sweet spot of opportunity.”
What’s next?
Donchez said, “What an incredible opportunity for me to partner with Kevin, a friend, a colleague, someone I respect as much as I do, to continue to build this business. We came out here at the end of 2016 and opened this office in Summit. So, we’re approaching our 10-year anniversary. We’ve more than doubled our business over that time. We’ve more than doubled our head count over that time.
“The trajectory and the ramp of our growth continue to move up and to the right. Our clients continue to be incredibly productive in their businesses. They continue to want to partner with us – and that’s going to require us to continue to hire in order to support the needs of our clients and the needs of their families as more generations get involved in their family businesses and family wealth.
“And that’s an incredibly exciting thing to be a part of – but it’s incredibly exciting to be doing it at J.P. Morgan.”
