JPMorgan creates new role to oversee junior bankers as Wall Street wrestles with workload concerns

JPMorgan Chase has created a new global role overseeing all junior bankers in an effort to better manage their workload after a death. Bank of America The affiliate forced Wall Street in May to examine how it treats its youngest employees.

A memo sent this month named Ryland McClendon global investment banking associate and analyst leader, CNBC has learned.

Associates and analysts are the two lowest levels of Wall Street's hierarchy for investment banking and trading; Recent college graduates play the role for the high salaries and opportunities they can provide.

The memo specifically states that McClendon, a 14-year JPMorgan veteran and former banker who previously headed talent and career development, will support the “wellbeing and success” of junior bankers.

The move shows how JPMorgan, the largest American investment bank by revenue, is responding to the latest untimely death on Wall Street. In May, Bank of America's Leo Lukenus III died after working 100-hour weeks at a bank merger. Later that month, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said his bank was examining what it could learn from the tragedy.

Then, starting in August, JPMorgan's senior managers instructed their investment banking team that junior bankers should typically work no more than 80 hours, part of a new focus on tracking their workload, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

Exceptions can be made for live deals, said the person, who declined to be identified to speak about internal policies.

Dimon railed against some of Wall Street's underlying practices at a financial conference at Georgetown University on Tuesday. Some of the hours worked by junior bankers are a function of inefficiency or tradition rather than necessity, he suggests.

“A lot of investment bankers, they've traveled all week, they come home and they give you four assignments and you have to work all weekend,” Dimon said. “It's not right.”

Senior bankers will be held accountable if their analysts and associates routinely trip over policy, he said.

“You're violating it,” Dimon warned. “You have to stop, and it's in your bonus, so people know we really mean it.”