KINGSTON, Ja­maica–The JMMB Group re­ceived full sup­port from all share­hold­ers present, or those vot­ing by proxy, on Thurs­day dur­ing an ex­tra­or­di­nary gen­er­al meet­ing (EGM) at the Ter­ra No­va Ho­tel.

The share­hold­ers gave a re­sound­ing 100 per cent vote, sig­nalling their ap­proval for a new scheme of arrange­ment for JMMB Ltd. This will see the trans­fer of own­er­ship of the sub­sidiaries across the re­gion and JMMB Ltd., to the hold­ing com­pa­ny, JMMB Group Ltd. The move will al­low the JMMB Group to meet the reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments out­lined by the Bank of Ja­maica (BOJ), al­low­ing the cen­tral bank a com­pre­hen­sive and un­lim­it­ed ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion about all the com­pa­nies com­pris­ing the group.

In keep­ing with this strate­gic thrust, the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to fur­ther strength­en its lo­cal and re­gion­al pres­ence in Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and T&T.The JMMB Group will now be­come the hold­ing com­pa­ny for JMMB Lim­it­ed and the oth­er sub­sidiary com­pa­nies in Ja­maica, T&T and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic.

Im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing its EGM, JMMB pro­ceed­ed with its an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing dur­ing which, the com­pa­ny shared the build­ing out of its re­gion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strat­e­gy, and high­lights of each sub­sidiary's per­for­mance. Kei­th Dun­can, Group CEO, not­ed that the com­pa­ny has had some pos­i­tive re­sults, which will be "a win win sit­u­a­tion for all its stake­hold­ers"–share­hold­ers, clients and team mem­bers.

Com­ment­ing to the val­ue of re­gion­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Dun­can said: "The group's core earn­ings and core prof­its con­tin­ued on an up­ward tra­jec­to­ry, with rev­enue grow­ing by 13.88 per cent and a 17. 10 per cent growth in prof­its year-over-year", de­spite the chal­leng­ing econ­o­my in Ja­maica.

JMMB con­tin­ues to ex­pe­ri­ence sig­nif­i­cant re­turns from its op­er­a­tions in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, based on its first mover ad­van­tage; boast­ing the high­est lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty of any se­cu­ri­ties com­pa­ny in that coun­try. JMMB Puesto de Bol­sa record­ed an in­crease of 61.61 per cent (US$3.96 mil­lion) net prof­it for the 2013/14 fi­nan­cial year.

In the T&T mar­ket, the fo­cus has been on build­ing out group's in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices mod­el, with the ac­qui­si­tion of the JMMB's first com­mer­cial bank in 2013 (In­ter­com­mer­cial Bank Lim­it­ed and In­ter­com­mer­cial Mer­chant Bank Ltd–IBL Bank­ing Group); and man­age­ment of the new­ly launched JMMB In­vest­ments T&T (JMM­BITT).

Against the back­drop of a more in­te­grat­ed ap­proach across the Group, in­vest­ments have been made in T&T in both per­son­nel and in­fra­struc­tur­al ca­pa­bil­i­ties dur­ing the 2013/14 fi­nan­cial year, re­sult­ing in a 22 per centin­crease in op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es.

This in­vest­ment, IBL's CEO Kr­ish­na Bood­hai ex­plained, "will fa­cil­i­tate the ex­pan­sion of ser­vice de­liv­ery chan­nels to im­prove branch ex­pe­ri­ence." In spite of this in­crease, and the im­pact of a one-off pro­vi­sion­ing on its loan port­fo­lio in the first quar­ter, IBL made a net prof­it of TT$6.58 mil­lion for the 2013/14 fi­nan­cial year, and grew its to­tal as­sets by 13 per cent (US$278 mil­lion).

In Ja­maica, while the eco­nom­ic cli­mate re­mains chal­leng­ing, op­er­a­tions have had op­ti­mistic re­sults with the im­ple­men­ta­tion of strate­gic ini­tia­tives through: fur­ther di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of busi­ness lines, with the ro­bust ex­pan­sion of JMMB's Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Unit, to of­fer cus­tomised and in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to medi­um and large cor­po­rate clients; the in­crease in off-bal­ance sheet as­sets, as shown in an in­crease in net prof­its of J$197.66 mil­lion of JMMB Fund Man­agers Ltd.

In ad­di­tion, there is a greater thrust to­wards lever­ag­ing syn­er­gies across the group and in­creas­ing op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cies in or­der to curb the in­crease op­er­at­ing costs, over the last fi­nan­cial year.

Dun­can shared his time­line for the JMMB Group to reap fur­ther ben­e­fits: "As we com­plete our tar­get­ed ac­qui­si­tions across the re­gion, we (ex­pect to) see a pos­i­tive im­pact of the build-out of the group's in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices mod­el over the next two-five years. This will re­sult in in­creased long-term sus­tain­able re­turns to all our share­hold­ers; (which will be ) a win/win for all stake­hold­ers."

The JMMB Group's fu­ture strate­gic di­rec­tion will en­tail the roll-out of the in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices mod­el across the re­gion start­ing in Ja­maica and lat­er in T&T and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic. This strat­e­gy will en­tail greater fi­nan­cial of­fer­ings as a re­sult of the busi­ness line di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, which will pro­vide an in­creased range of fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions to cater to clients, as an in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices provider; un­der­pinned by a cul­ture of fi­nan­cial part­ner­ship.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the three-year strat­e­gy will see the com­pa­ny im­ple­ment­ing a new and dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed group branch ex­pe­ri­ence, ground­ed in JMMB's cul­ture, en­hanced by a mul­ti-chan­nel ex­pe­ri­ence through the com­pa­ny's elec­tron­ic ser­vice de­liv­ery strat­e­gy. In keep­ing with the in­te­grat­ed strat­e­gy, the JMMB Group will al­so in­tro­duce a goal-ori­ent­ed fi­nan­cial so­lu­tions ap­proach, to of­fer a dy­nam­ic man­age­ment of client port­fo­lios.