JPMorgan, BofA want to ease junior bankers' workloads

Two of Wall Street’s largest investment banks are rolling out measures that may ease junior bankers’ workloads amid complaints across the industry that weekly hours are increasingly creeping past 100.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. will limit junior banker hours to 80 per week in most cases, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Exceptions may include extra work to complete live deals, the person said.

Bank of America Corp., meanwhile, is launching a new internal platform this month that will more closely monitor individual workloads, according to a person with knowledge of the plan. The firm began testing the so-called banker diary earlier this year.

Demands on Wall Street’s rank and file have swelled in recent months as executives race to capture an upswing in corporate deals — testing promises made by their firms just a few years ago to give junior staff more breaks. The death in May of Bank of America associate Leo Lukenas from a heart attack stirred a debate across the industry over whether workloads are too often unhealthy.

Bank of America has said its executives take junior bankers’ health seriously and that the firm frequently reviews policies to ensure they’re protected. 

Still, some of its junior bankers described to Bloomberg in June how they were shaving down their reported worktime to avoid breaching 100-hour weekly limits. They worried that crossing that line would trigger questions from human resources and draw the ire of managers.

This month, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm is rolling out a new system for monitoring trainees’ work, with hours reported on a daily basis, rather than weekly, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Part of the idea is to spot who’s busiest and who else has capacity, spreading assignments.

“We successfully piloted this improved technology platform earlier this year to help our team more efficiently serve our investment banking clients,” a Bank of America spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The weekly cap on hours at JPMorgan is a first for the bank and is in line with New York state curbs on hours worked by medical residents, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier, along with the news of Bank of America’s new platform.