The JMMB Group be­lieves that in­creased fo­cus on digi­ti­sa­tion, im­proved op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy and in­or­gan­ic growth are key im­per­a­tives to dri­ve its prof­itabil­i­ty in Ja­maica, the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic and T&T over this fi­nan­cial year and be­yond.

In a re­lease, the head of the JMMB Group T&T, Ronald Carter un­der­scored the thrust to­wards a dig­i­tal ap­proach, high­light­ing that the growth in the mar­ket share of JMMB Ex­press Fi­nance (TT), the con­sumer fi­nance arm, has grown in­creased to 5 per cent with­in 2 years.

The com­pa­ny added that JMMB Ex­press Fi­nance (T&T) al­so be­gan con­tribut­ing to the prof­it of the fi­nan­cial Group—in ad­di­tion to open­ing two ad­di­tion­al branch­es over the last fi­nan­cial year.

Carter ex­plained, “that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40% of that sub­sidiary’s client base sought to ac­cess its of­fer­ings large­ly through on­line chan­nels, even pre-COVID, and this con­tin­ues to be an area of growth.”

The state­ment al­so high­light­ed that JMMB Group CEO Kei­th Dun­can in his pre­sen­ta­tion dur­ing the Bank’s first vir­tu­al an­nu­al gen­er­al meet­ing, he out­lined that the com­pa­ny has been mak­ing strides in “dig­i­tiz­ing its process­es and in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms” in a bid to make client fi­nan­cial part­ner­ship more seam­less and ac­ces­si­ble, not­ing that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has ac­cel­er­at­ed the com­pa­ny’s move to do so.

The JMMB Group re­port­ed that Dun­can, while ac­knowl­edg­ing that JMMB Group ex­pe­ri­enced some In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT) chal­lenges dur­ing its re­cent im­ple­men­ta­tion of its bank stan­dard­iza­tion process in Sep­tem­ber, in­vit­ed share­hold­ers and clients to bear with the com­pa­ny, as it seeks to work to rec­ti­fy the “teething pains,” and promised an im­proved client ex­pe­ri­ence and added val­ue for cus­tomers.

Dun­can al­so point­ed to the roll out of JMMB Group’s (ini­tial pub­lic of­fer) IPO fea­ture on the JMMB on­line plat­form, Money­line, that has been fa­cil­i­tat­ing greater par­tic­i­pa­tion of its clients in the Ja­maican stock mar­ket and made the process seam­less.

Dun­can not­ed that in ad­di­tion to en­hanc­ing the client ex­pe­ri­ence, the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion lays the foun­da­tion for im­prov­ing the com­pa­ny’s op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy.

In the state­ment JMMB not­ed that its Group’s bank­ing op­er­a­tions, across the three ter­ri­to­ries in which it op­er­ates have al­so seen strong growth, out­pac­ing the mar­ket, while main­tain­ing a low non-per­form­ing loan port­fo­lio.

The fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion in its state­ment ex­plained that as the coun­tries in the re­gion have been re­open­ing their economies on a phased ba­sis and the COVID-19 threat is bet­ter un­der­stood and man­aged, it is seek­ing to fur­ther pur­sue in­or­gan­ic growth to bol­ster the or­gan­ic growth it has ex­pe­ri­enced, over the last fi­nan­cial year.