JPMorgan Chase says Fed stress test results contained an error

JPMorgan Chase said late Wednesday that the Federal Reserve overestimated a key measure of income in the giant bank’s recent stress test, and that its losses under the exam should actually be higher than what the regulator found.

The bank took the unusual step of issuing a press release minutes before midnight ET to disclose its response to the Fed’s findings.

JPMorgan said that the Fed’s projections for a measure called “other comprehensive income” — which represents revenues, expenses and losses that are excluded from net income — “appears to be too large.”

Under the Fed’s table of projected revenue, income and losses though 2026, JPMorgan was assigned $13 billion in OCI, more than any of the 31 lenders in this year’s test. It also estimated that the bank would face roughly $107 billion in loan, investment and trading losses in that scenario.

“Should the Firm’s analysis be correct, the resulting stress losses would be modestly higher than those disclosed by the Federal Reserve,” the bank said.

The error means that JPMorgan might require more time to finalize its share repurchase plan, according to a person with knowledge of the situation. Banks were expected to begin disclosing those plans on Friday after the market closes.

The news is a wrinkle to the Federal Reserve’s announcement yesterday that all 31 of the banks in the annual exercise cleared the hurdle of being able to withstand a severe hypothetical recession, while maintaining adequate capital levels and the ability to lend to consumers and corporations.

Last year, Bank of America and Citigroup made similar disclosures, saying that estimates of their own future income differed from the Fed’s results.

Banks have complained that aspects of the annual exam are opaque and that it’s difficult to understand how the Fed produces some of its results.