The Challenge
Walking into a room where everyone knows more than you
Equity capital markets banking is a world with its own language. Terms like bookbuild, working party list, and follow-on offering are shorthand for processes that take years to learn. The bankers I needed to research — Managing Directors who had spent decades executing IPOs — had no patience for someone who didn't understand what they did. If I walked in cold, I'd get polite non-answers and a wasted hour.
The product and technology teams supporting these bankers were in a similar position: building tools against assumptions, not evidence. The ECM deal lifecycle — from identifying a prospective issuer to post-deal close — had never been formally documented at JPMorgan. Everyone did it differently. No one had ever been asked to explain it end-to-end.
My mandate was to change that: surface, document, and map the full lifecycle of an ECM deal — in enough depth to drive real product decisions, and with enough credibility to land with the most senior people in the building.
Business Mission
Expand JPMorgan's global equity capital markets wallet share to be consistently recognized as the #1 bank across all capital markets products — through longer relationships, best-in-class advice, and operational efficiency across one Capital Markets team.
The ECM Deal Lifecycle
Eight phases, hundreds of decisions
The pre-work produced a draft lifecycle map spanning all eight phases of an equity capital markets deal — from initial prospecting through post-deal close. This document had never existed at JPMorgan. Bringing it into the focus groups shifted the dynamic immediately: bankers weren't being asked to explain their world from scratch. They were being asked to correct ours. They did — and in doing so, surfaced the detail and nuance that no amount of desk research could have produced alone.
Phase 1–2
Prospecting & Relationship Building
- Monitor TAM & company space
- Identify key decision makers
- Draw engagement plans
- Track engagement catalysts
Phase 3
Deal Origination
- Engage client stakeholders
- Proactive outreach with ideas
- Chase meetings
- Define next steps
Phase 4
Deal Prep & Marketing
- Prepare pitch deck
- Define equity story
- Syndication process
- Working Party List
Phase 5
Launch & Bookbuild
- Investor targeting
- Roadshow management
- Shareholder updates
- Compliance controls
Phase 6
Post-Deal Closing
- Aftermarket tracking
- Deal announcement
- Post-mortem
- Case study generation
ECM Deal Lifecycle — Journey Map
Prospecting
Relationship
Origination
Engagement Mgmt
Client Advisory
Deal Prep
Launch & Build
Post-Deal
Monitor TAM & company space
Draw engagement plan & track catalysts
Proactive outreach with ideas
Regular touchpoints, log interactions
Define equity story & positioning
Pitch deck, fee proposal, WPL
Roadshow, book build, pricing
Aftermarket, case study, post-mortem
* Prospecting & Relationship Building identified as primary focus area for product investment based on value unlock potential and strategic alignment.
Key Findings
Five themes across the deal lifecycle
The synthesis surfaced five recurring problem themes — each crossing multiple phases of the equity capital markets lifecycle. The first three (Visibility, Accountability, Actionability) represented the most acute pain and the clearest opportunity for product intervention.
ECM bankers were consistently brought into relationships too late — after coverage had already developed rapport with a potential issuer. Valuable client intelligence (lending data, private banking relationships, existing JPM exposure) was siloed, unstructured, or simply unavailable. By the time ECM arrived, the pitch was underdeveloped and the relationship underbaked.
"I'll get info from someone in Tennessee that is a middle market banker that has a client that wants to see if it makes sense for them to go public... how did it get to this size and how are we just being made aware? ...oh wow, this is a really sizable business. It wasn't on anyone's radar."
Both Coverage and ECM bankers shared responsibility for client engagement — which in practice meant no one truly owned it. Engagement plans were drafted manually in emails, never formalized in a central system, and rarely followed up on. Prospects were discussed in monthly calls, noted with enthusiasm, and then forgotten.
"Behavior wise, where we fail is we have these monthly target calls where we discuss 100 situations and there's only 1 follow-up which we engage on. It's a great name; we should follow-up — then nothing happens."
Opportunity tracking was done primarily for reporting purposes — it captured status, not next steps. Automated alerting had become too noisy to be useful; bankers had learned to ignore it. There were no standardized checklists, no assigned owners per action, no mechanism to enforce follow-through. Notes described situations; they never prescribed what to do about them.
"No one has ever asked: 'Has this thing been actioned?' Notes are a situation description, not an actual action plan or name against it."
Knowledge Sharing
Supporting
Institutional knowledge — deal history, client context, comparable transactions, relationship intelligence — was locked in individuals rather than systems. When senior bankers rotated or left, that knowledge walked out with them. New team members had no reliable onramp to the context they needed to contribute quickly.
Manual, repetitive data tasks consumed meaningful banker time — pulling from Pitchbook, FactSet, and other sources; collating investor lists; building marketing materials by hand. Many of these tasks could be partially automated or at minimum standardized. Every hour spent on data assembly was an hour not spent on client relationships or deal strategy.
Strategic Direction
Prospecting as the highest-value unlock
Of the eight lifecycle phases, Prospecting and Relationship Building emerged as the clear priority for product investment. The rationale was two-fold: it represented the greatest concentration of unaddressed pain, and it was the phase most directly aligned with the bank's strategic goal of expanding ECM wallet share through longer, deeper client relationships.
The research informed a proposed workflow spanning four capability areas: consolidated prospecting alerts with structured visibility, clear ownership assignment with shared accountability, AI-assisted suggested next actions to drive opportunity progress, and real-time data hydration to improve forecasting and planning.
Proposed Objective
Empower bankers to discover, act on, and convert potential ECM issuers — including non-JPM clients
Outcome 1
Uncover new, previously overlooked prospective deals through improved signal-to-noise in alerting
Outcome 2
Expand overall deal pipeline with higher-quality early-stage opportunities identified each quarter
Outcome 3
Improved visibility and collaboration across teams on early-stage opportunities
Outcome 4
Clearer ownership and follow-through on identified prospects with tangible next steps mapped
Proposed Workflow — Four Capability Areas
01
Prospecting Visibility
Consolidated view of prospecting alerts from CRM, AI, and screener sources — with Yes/No assessment for initial prioritization
02
Opportunity Tracking
Assign clear ownership and shared visibility to each opportunity — tracking from prospect identification through to deal execution
03
Actionable Intelligence
AI-suggested next actions that encourage opportunity progress — moving from passive notes to active, assigned task plans
04
Data Continuity
Capture proprietary knowledge for market intelligence — hydrating reporting dashboards in real time for better forecasting
Impact
Back to the business mission
JPMorgan's goal was to be the #1 equity capital markets bank — through longer relationships, better intelligence, and faster action on opportunities. This research gave the product and strategy teams their first evidence-based picture of where that mission was being undermined: deals missed because ECM came in too late, opportunities lost because no one owned the follow-through, and institutional knowledge that walked out the door when bankers left.
The findings didn't just inform a product roadmap. They created a shared language across research, product, technology, and leadership for what needed to change — and why.
Executive Audience
Findings were presented to the #3 product executive at JPMorgan — reporting directly to Jamie Dimon — making this among the most senior research presentations in the firm's digital banking organization. That presentation became the catalyst for six downstream initiatives and directly shaped Global Investment Banking platform strategy.
Technology
Informed ongoing tech pilots with the GIB Technology team — grounding feature decisions in validated banker workflows
Onboarding
Guided IB onboarding development efforts, giving new bankers a documented view of the process for the first time
AI Research
Annotated data fed into a proof-of-concept LLM research repository, enabling the bank's AI-powered pitchbook creation initiative
Coverage KPIs
Informed Coverage KPI development for senior leadership — connecting research findings to measurable business outcomes
IB Foundation
Became the foundational research that paved the way for persona-driven end-to-end journey mapping across the full Investment Banking group
Strategy
Directly shaped the August Product Strategy workshop — used to refine product vision, prioritize the roadmap, and align cross-functional leadership
Lessons Learned
What made this research land
Defining business objectives and securing strong stakeholder buy-in before research began was the single most valuable investment — it meant the findings had a home before they existed.
Pre-work with SMEs laid the groundwork for smooth user-facing sessions. Bankers trusted us more because we'd already done our homework — we weren't asking them to start from scratch.
In-person sessions and fast follow-up prototypes were critical to sustaining executive engagement. With a time-scarce audience, momentum is everything.
Deciding when alignment was needed — and when to move without it — required careful judgment. Not every decision needed consensus; some needed a clear owner willing to commit.