JP Morgan is one of the largest investment companies worldwide – and also one of the most controversial, when it comes to climate, arms, and multiple other issues.
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Learn more about our company profiles →Our research highlights several ethical issues with JP Morgan, including huge financing of fossil fuels, the funding of nuclear weapons, and subsidiaries in tax havens.
Below we outline some of these issues. To see the full detailed stories, and JP Morgan’s overall ethical rating, please sign in or subscribe.
JP Morgan is the biggest financier of oil, gas, and coal in the world. The company has provided over $192 billion (£143 billion) to fossil fuels since 2021, according to the most recent Banking on Climate Chaos report.
Each year the report, written by a coalition of NGOs, looks at the financial support provided for fossil fuels by the 65 largest banks in the world. In 2025, it found that the banks had committed $869 billion ($650 billion) to companies conducting business in fossil fuels in the previous year. JP Morgan has in fact increased its financing by $15 billion ($11 billion) compared to the previous year.
This has included financing of oil and gas companies involved in destruction of the Amazon. In 2023, advocacy organisation Stand.Earth published a report which found that JP Morgan was the largest financier for the oil and gas sector in deals directly traced to activities in Peru, Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador, and had been involved in deals that expand oil and gas production in the Amazon.
“The rainforest has been fragmented, deforested, and burned to the point that scientists are warning it could be crossing a disastrous ecological tipping point,” the group said. “Decades of flaring and oil spills related to the oil and gas industry have polluted Amazonia waterways and soil, making Indigenous communities sick, reducing their livelihoods, and violating their rights.”
In 2024, JP Morgan provided more than $20 billion (£15 billion) in loans and underwriting to companies producing nuclear weapons, making it the third largest creditor for the sector. It also held investments of over $7.5 billion (£5.6 billion) in those companies, according to the 2025 Don’t Bank on the Bomb report.
“By actively rejecting weapons of mass destruction, financial institutions can play a vital role in strengthening efforts towards a world free of the nuclear threat,” the report said.
Ethical Consumer rates all financial companies on their financial policies. It found that JP Morgan did not have any ethical lending policy covering all loans, instead stating, “We do not make decisions based on political or social agendas."
This meant that it did not have any policies regarding the financing of fossil fuels or arms, including the worst weapons manufacturing. It also did not have a policy regarding companies linked to oppressive regimes, workers’ rights abuses or factory farming.
The company therefore scored very poorly in Ethical Consumer’s rating.
JP Morgan owns multiple companies in tax havens such as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands that are high risk for tax avoidance.
The company did have a statement on its UK Tax Strategy, stating: "we will not engage in any arrangements that aim to achieve a tax result contrary to the expressed intentions of the UK Parliament. As disclosed in our UK tax returns, we are not involved in any tax avoidance schemes."
However, no adequate explanation of the subsidiaries identified above (and what they were used for) could be found, and it therefore scored poorly in Ethical Consumer’s rating.
The text above was written in December 2025, and most research was conducted in February 2025.
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