J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) still has ambitions of increasing its dividend. The bank also wants to increase its share buybacks. This is an important step because Jamie Dimon and team did not get the full permission that was sought under the capital allocation plan by regulators in the wake of the London Whale debacle which cost the banking giant billions of dollars and which tarnished the reputation of the bank.

Now we have Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake having made new comments on Monday that seem to champion the move toward higher dividends and buybacks yet again. She was presenting at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference. One other note is that the banking giant has now increased its legal reserves as well by what we evaluated as over $1.5 billion, due largely to mortgage-backed securities litigation and other regulatory issues acting against the bank.

J.P. Morgan earnings will be released on October 11, 2013. J.P. Morgan shares have been somewhat range-bound of late, and the gain on Monday of 0.3% compares to a 52-week trading range of $38.73 to $56.93. Its dividend yield is 2.9% based upon the latest $0.38 per share per quarter payout. Be advised that this July payment was the first $0.38 payout after having been at $0.30 per share for five prior quarters.

Where this gets more than interesting on the dividend front is that J.P.Morgan’s $0.38 per share dividend is now back up to where the payout was before banks were barred from making such high payouts during the financial crisis. The yield is now right at 2.88%, and that rivals the 2.88% yield of Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) as well.

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