By Tatiana Bautzer

NEW YORK JPMorgan Chase & Co has increased its stake in Brazilian digital bank C6 to 46% from 40%, the banks said in a statement on Tuesday, without disclosing the financial terms.

The banks said C6 had expanded its number of clients to 25 million from 8 million since June 2021, when JPMorgan bought its initial stake, and had added products such as auto loans.

Sanoke Viswanathan, JPMorgan's CEO of international consumer banking, said the investment in C6 Bank was an important part of the lender's global strategy.

The credit portfolio of C6 had increased to 40 billion reais ($8.2 billion) from 9.5 billion when JPMorgan first invested, according to the statement.

JPMorgan and C6 did not announce a valuation in their 2021 agreement, but C6 was valued at 11.3 billion reais in December 2020, six months before the deal, equivalent to $2.28 billion at the time, when it raised capital from private investors.

C6 posted a 2.2 billion real loss last year, due to increased provisions for credit losses.

($1 = 4.8645 reais)

(Reporting by Tatiana Bautzer; Editing by Chris Reese, Michelle Price and David Holmes)