The JMMB Group has record­ed J$780 mil­lion (TT$35.1 mil­lion) in net prof­it for the three months end­ed June 30, 2020.

This rep­re­sent­ed a 36.7 per cent de­cline when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od in 2019 (J$1.118 bil­lion or TT$50.4 mil­lion).

In the di­rec­tors state­ment, Chair­man Archibald Camp­bell and Group Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Kei­th Dun­can said: “De­spite the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and its im­pact on the glob­al and lo­cal econ­o­my, the JMMB Group de­liv­ered cred­i­ble re­sults for the three months end­ed June 2020.”

JMMB record­ed op­er­at­ing prof­it of J$1.1 bil­lion (TT$49.9 mil­lion). This rep­re­sent­ed a 39.4 per cent de­cline rel­a­tive to the pri­or pe­ri­od (J$1.846 bil­lion or TT$83.1 mil­lion) as the com­pa­ny not­ed that its first quar­ter was char­ac­terised by low busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.

The di­rec­tors not­ed, how­ev­er, that there was an in­creased fo­cus on con­ve­nience where­by the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion en­cour­aged its clients to use its Money­line plat­form, which re­sult­ed in strong growth in new users and in­creased ac­cess by ex­ist­ing users.

Fur­ther­more, the di­rec­tors stat­ed: “the pan­dem­ic served as a cat­a­lyst for the ex­pan­sion of our dig­i­tal foot­print as dur­ing the quar­ter we launched Re­al Time Eq­ui­ty Trad­ing.”

The ap­pli­ca­tion fur­nish­es JMMB clients with added ca­pa­bil­i­ty of ex­e­cut­ing eq­ui­ty trans­ac­tions in re­al time with the Ja­maican Stock Ex­change.

The group not­ed that it con­tin­ued to sup­port its clients, large­ly through its dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives, with time­ly and sound fi­nan­cial ad­vice as they nav­i­gate a pe­ri­od of height­ened un­cer­tain­ty.

JMMB added that client loy­al­ty re­mained high dur­ing the pe­ri­od and was ev­i­denced by strong growth in its clients’ funds un­der man­age­ment. Cus­tomer de­posits saw a 4.5 per cent in­crease of J$4.9 bil­lion (TT$220.7 mil­lion) when com­pared with the same pe­ri­od in the pre­vi­ous quar­ter.

The com­pa­ny’s fi­nan­cial state­ments al­so high­light­ed that its share of prof­it from Sagi­cor Fi­nan­cial Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd (SFC) was al­so ad­verse­ly im­pact­ed by the pan­dem­ic, which re­sult­ed in a share of loss­es amount­ing to J$8.9 mil­lion (TT$0.4 mil­lion) for the quar­ter.

The di­rec­tors not­ed the loss “was pri­mar­i­ly re­lat­ed to high­er Ex­pect­ed Cred­it Loss­es (ECLs) due to the pan­dem­ic as well as an in­ter­nal rein­sur­ance trans­ac­tion that re­sult­ed in a strength­en­ing of the re­serves.”

They con­tin­ued: “How­ev­er, we are con­fi­dent that this po­si­tion will soon re­turn to prof­itabil­i­ty and ma­te­ri­al­ly con­tribute to share­hold­ers’ val­ue in a pos­i­tive man­ner.”

For the up­com­ing quar­ter, Camp­bell and Dun­can said they ex­pect un­cer­tain­ty to per­sist in the fi­nan­cial space as the pro­gres­sion of COVID-19 and its con­tin­ued im­pact on economies are yet to be de­ter­mined.

They not­ed that the JMMB Group will con­tin­ue to bol­ster its fi­nan­cial po­si­tion by so­lid­i­fy­ing its strong cap­i­tal base and in­creas­ing liq­uid­i­ty po­si­tion, en­sur­ing that it is equipped to deal with any ad­verse sit­u­a­tions