KINGSTON, Ja­maica–The JMMB Group grew its op­er­at­ing rev­enue by 9.9 per cent, for the first quar­ter of the 2016/17 fi­nan­cial year end­ing June 30, mov­ing from J$3.10 bil­lion in the cor­re­spond­ing pri­or pe­ri­od, to J$3.42 bil­lion.

The re­gion­al fi­nan­cial en­ti­ty, how­ev­er, which boasts op­er­a­tions in Ja­maica, T&T and Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, re­port­ed a mar­gin­al de­cline in its net prof­it of ap­prox­i­mate­ly two per cent year-over-year mov­ing from J$602.9 mil­lion to J$593.4 mil­lion. This was at­trib­ut­able to start-up costs of J$98.28 mil­lion and fur­ther build-out of its busi­ness lines, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, to in­clude mu­tu­al fund ad­min­is­tra­tion and pen­sion fund ad­min­is­tra­tion, through JMMB So­ciedad Ad­min­istrado­ra de Fon­dos de In­ver­sion, SA (JMMB SAFI) and JMMB AFP BDI SA (JMMB AFP), which are in the in­cu­ba­to­ry stage of op­er­a­tions.

The group's op­er­a­tions in that coun­try are now ful­ly bol­stered to pro­vide a wider range of ser­vices, in line with the group's in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices mod­el.

As ev­i­dence of this ex­pan­sion of of­fer­ings, JMMB SAFI is set to raise US$3M through its first US$ Re­al Es­tate Closed In­vest­ment Trust (RE­IT) Fund be­tween Ju­ly 31 and Au­gust 18, and JMMB SAFI, which re­ceived reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval in De­cem­ber 2015, so far, has J$393.02 mil­lion in funds un­der man­age­ment.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the group's op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es have been im­pact­ed by in­creased staff costs, at­trib­ut­able to the build out of its busi­ness mod­el across the sub­sidiaries in the group. These ef­forts are ex­pect­ed in the long-term to in­crease op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and cre­ate greater syn­er­gies across the group.

In ad­di­tion to the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with the start-up and build out of the busi­ness mod­el across the group, as­set tax al­so ac­count­ed for J$405.48 mil­lion of the J$2.58 bil­lion op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es–an in­crease of J$8 mil­lion over the com­par­a­tive pri­or pe­ri­od.

T&T has demon­strat­ed ev­i­dence of the group's growth in rev­enue, and max­imi­sa­tion of brand syn­er­gies, hav­ing of­fi­cial­ly launched the re­brand­ed JMMB Bank (T&T) in May. Op­er­a­tions of sub­sidiaries in the twin is­land re­pub­lic have re­port­ed a 32 per cent in­crease (or J$150 mil­lion) in rev­enue, and con­tin­ues to build out the in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices mod­el.

Sim­i­lar­ly, Ja­maica's op­er­a­tions con­tin­ue on a pos­i­tive tra­jec­to­ry, con­tribut­ing the li­on's share of the group's rev­enue, to­tal­ing J$2.53 bil­lion.

While bal­anc­ing in­creased op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es, the group's net in­ter­est in­come grew year-over-year by 7.6 per cent, mov­ing from J$1.44 bil­lion to J$1.55 bil­lion.

This was at­trib­ut­able to the growth in in­vest­ment and loan port­fo­lios, while re­duc­ing the cost of funds across the ter­ri­to­ries. In keep­ing with the strate­gic ob­jec­tive of in­creas­ing the group's suite of man­aged funds, across the sub­sidiaries, fees and com­mis­sion in­creased by 56.3 per cent.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, for­eign ex­change mar­gins and cam­bio trad­ing grew by 72.3 per cent, to J$442.8 mil­lion, dri­ven by mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty and ac­tiv­i­ty vol­ume. Gains on se­cu­ri­ties trad­ing, how­ev­er, de­clined by eight per cent, rel­a­tive to the com­par­a­tive pri­or pe­ri­od, as a re­sult of the in­clu­sion of the J$500.6 mil­lion in one-off gains.