Asif Mohamed: Hi, I'm Asif Mohamed from Global Research, head of digital product.

Sam Azzarello: And I'm Sam Azzarello and I lead content strategy for global research.

Asif Mohamed: So Sam, how are you approaching digital research content to make it more impactful for our clients?

Sam Azzarello: Well, I think at the core, it's about meeting our clients where we are. So on our digital channels, we like to think omnichannel. That could be through email, through our portal, JP Morgan Markets, it could be through a podcast on Apple and Spotify, or it could be on LinkedIn or through client interactions. So there's many different ways that we think about getting our content, our best in class content to our client in a form that they want and meeting them where they already are. So Asif, I know we invest a lot. We do a lot to make sure we're at the forefront of what our clients need. Are there any recent tools that we've created to help our clients access our content?

Asif Mohamed: Absolutely. There are lots of technological innovations that are happening across the industry, and we've been leveraging AI, the cloud, and data in many ways to deliver content to clients in the way that they want to receive it.

Sam Azzarello: I know we've been doing things in AI. What can you share in terms of how AI is changing the global research model?

Asif Mohamed: We've been using AI for quite a while. We've been using it in macroeconomics. Our economists use AI to understand what central bank speeches are all about and when they're sentiments that are changing on a daily basis. We use it to identify thematic information in the news that can help our clients invest and generate more alpha. And we use it to understand how companies, sectors, and countries can be affected by thematic news on a daily basis.

We're also using AI in search. Search is a challenge, has been a challenge for the research industry for a while, and it's because keyword search doesn't give you the contextual value that folks are looking for. And so we're using AI to better search, scan across lots of information, decades of research, both written and data to be able to synthesize that information relatively quickly. And so that's a game changer, we think.

Sam Azzarello: Really valuable, I would add, right? AI is facilitating semantic search. And for those who are maybe not as familiar, it's this idea I can search DC or US policy or Washington and get all the content that I need no matter what term is perhaps mentioned in the report.

Asif Mohamed: That's correct. That's a contextual search, semantic, and we're able to generate insights faster, and that benefits the clients. It also benefits our analysts who are looking for information in lots of data.

Sam Azzarello: Also interesting to note that our analysts are using AI, like you mentioned, economics reports, sentiment coming out from central bank governors, different speeches that we're hearing. We're using AI to do sentiment analysis in a very innovative and value add way for clients.

Asif Mohamed: That's right. We've got the central bank product that looks across all of the central banks and their statements and analyzes it for whether it's hawkish or dovish sentiment coming from those central banks. So Sam, how do we meet clients where they are?

Sam Azzarello: Situations arise and we want to be able to bring our insights to clients and meet them where they are. So when tariff news broke earlier this year, we set up a webcast right away for clients, answering their questions. We had a podcast. We pulled together content from research analysts all across the globe, cross asset into one piece. And we had an omnichannel approach to how we brought these insights to our clients.

Asif Mohamed: And how are these research products changing and adapting to market conditions?

Sam Azzarello: Well, I always think our research analysts have to react to the news, but at the core of it, they're providing processes and frameworks and ways of thinking to our clients because our clients are building out a mosaic of a view, and JP Morgan Global Research is one input in that. So to the extent that our analysts with deep expertise and very deep knowledge can provide a way of thinking to clients and investors, I know that that's very valuable and it allows it to be adaptable for clients no matter what really happens with the news and how things change.

Asif Mohamed: I'd love to hear about how you got here and a little bit of your background.

Sam Azzarello: So I think my journey's a little long-winded, like many peoples'. I actually started as a research analyst. So I love markets and I learned cross-asset markets and how to do research. And then I found over time it evolved to wanting to be on the backend and making sure that that research gets to clients in the right way, at the right time, in the right format. So still out of the deep love of markets, but I would say the expression of that has evolved.

Asif Mohamed: And do you really like what you do today?

Sam Azzarello: I truly do. I mean, I'm having a blast and I think it's important that myself and the team have fun because it sounds maybe cliche, but we spend a lot of hours at work. We enjoy the people that we work with. And overall, I do want to make sure that I'm enjoying myself day-to-day. Asif, tell me about your background. How did you get to where you are?

Asif Mohamed: So I started out as an engineer many years ago and I actually became a banker in derivatives and converts and ran business development functions and ended up currently in research. But I think the common theme throughout all of these roles, whether it was in technology or banking, equity capital markets, has been around innovation. And in every step of the way, there's always been a large component of innovation that really helps bring clients in, deliver better product, whether it's pricing or risk. A big part of it is always about innovation.

Sam Azzarello: Amazing. I would add there's something very powerful about distribution. I mean, distribution at the end of the day is how something gets out into the world. So I know we have really good content. It's award-winning content, but I would also add equally important is how we get it to clients, in what form, and to your point about how innovative we are in terms of evolving as the landscape changes.

Asif Mohamed: We deliver at scale every day for our clients. We send 1.5 million emails to our clients each day. We have 96,000 clients visiting our JP Morgan Markets platform on a monthly basis. My research is the client's personal hub. They can find information there that is based on their subscriptions, and we also make recommendations there for things that they may not know that they need.

Sam Azzarello: At scale is the phrase that always either adds the hiccup or in our case, the opportunity. So doing this for thousands of clients, millions of emails a day on all of our platforms, and I'd add we have a thousand analysts across the globe, covering every company, asset class, country, it's at scale.

Asif Mohamed: Yeah. And clients are demanding it. So we tend to want to skate to where the puck's going to be, and that requires sort of lengthy investments over a longer period of time. So it's not a one and done, it's an ongoing investment. Learning, being dynamic, delivering as the markets are changing and our clients' needs are changing. Who are the content creators within the product?

Sam Azzarello: Global Research is an absolute content powerhouse. We produce more than 130,000 pieces of content per year, and then we augment that with data sets and data experiences, lots of analysis. We cover countries, sectors, over 5,000 companies. I'm always blown away at the level of depth and expertise of our research analysts. I know however, they don't do it in a vacuum. They're working with sales and trading to get ideas. They're keeping a pulse on what's trending, what's important to clients. There is a continual dialogue between our research analysts and clients.

I also know they're keeping their eye out for what's coming, what's next, what's on the horizon, and they do that through data, alternative data, talking to different stakeholders and just drawing on their immense expertise that they've built from decades of being in their markets.

Asif Mohamed: So there are no reports without our analysts.

Sam Azzarello: There's a lot of trust and rapport built up over time between our research analysts and clients. And I think it's a show of trust that clients come to us in moments of market volatility or news flow or disruption, and they come to our research analysts to get their view because they trust our analysts and the breadth and depth of knowledge and expertise is there and it's been established. Insights from our research analysts are augmented with data use, and we know there is an insatiable appetite for more and more data. So Asif, what are we doing with respect to data in Global Research?

Asif Mohamed: You're right. Data is exploding, has been exploding for quite a while, and investment decisions are using more and more data. The electronic delivery of research, we call it machine-readable research, has become more and more important. Clients would like to search JP Morgan's research as well as their own proprietary data sets and content and generate insights. So data is a big deal for us, has always been.

We have DataQuery, which is our data platform on the JP Morgan Markets platform that has 13 million time series of data that investors are using to make investment decisions. We've also created industry differentiated data products such as JPMaQS, which is a macroeconomic quantummental data set that is used for making investment decisions and then traders use it for backtesting their trading strategies. So there's a wealth of existing information and we're creating new products as well to meet our clients' needs.

Sam Azzarello: And that's a powerful combination, augmenting our research analysts' insights with new and proprietary data sets to lead to faster and smarter insights.

Asif Mohamed: So how do we keep delivering for clients?

Sam Azzarello: We keep delivering for clients by making it as easy as possible for them. So we know the amount, the volume of information is only growing. So helping clients get to the key insights they need as efficiently and effectively as possible, that's the way forward.

Asif Mohamed: And what are some of the challenges that you're seeing today in terms of the need for information?

Sam Azzarello: Cross-asset is a space where I think we're going to see more of an evolution because many market events now, they ripple around the globe. They impact all the asset classes and the ability for us to pull together the breadth and depth of our expertise, light up that theme for clients and showcase it in a cross-asset format is going to become more powerful.

Asif Mohamed: And that's a space where we've been accelerating in the use of AI to generate insights faster by looking across lots of information, volumes and volumes of information, both written and data to generate those insights. So looking for a needle in a haystack in a very structured way is really the focus of some of the modern products within Global Research. So where do these ideas come from?

Sam Azzarello: Idea generation in research is a very creative process, I would say, and it's going to vary analyst to analyst, but it could be a tidbit overheard at a client event. It could be a news article. It could be a piece of data or a chart. It could be inspiration walking on the street. And from there, I know that our research analysts are all about collaboration. So they're bringing together their team, bringing together related asset classes and researchers across the department.

And from there, they're refining the idea, they're doing analysis, they're using data. And there's a lot of work and intellectual creativity that has to go into this process before a research note gets published. Asif, let's talk about personalization, the next frontier. So what does personalization look like for Global Research?

Asif Mohamed: So personalization for us is really about ensuring that the thousands, hundreds of thousands of clients that we have, that we have information about how to serve them best. And they've given us a lot of that information and we use it to give them a very bespoke experience and understanding obviously the research reports that they're consuming, but also delivering potentially data and other products and services that may be relevant for them.

And so in my view, personalization really tries to serve each client individually based on their needs, whether it's during a call with an analyst or through consumption of their reports. More importantly, we do listen to our clients. And so listening to clients, getting feedback helps us deliver better products and grow our products and our services for those clients.

Sam Azzarello: And I know there can at times be a little bit of FOMO, right? Clients want to know what they might be missing out on, what the next new idea is, who's a new analyst perhaps that they haven't engaged with before. So to the extent that recommendations and personalization does that, we know we're serving clients through those channels.

Asif Mohamed: That's right. We're serving clients through personalization and recommendations, both in thematic as well as process type products that they may not be aware of, we're helping them to find those proactively. Again, we create a lot of content. How does a client really identify something that they're not focused on every day? We're using technology, AI, and the client's feedback to get them the content that they may not be aware of, that they absolutely should look at for their investment decisions.