Durrant Pate/Contributor

The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) is seeing more improvements in banks ensuring their Automated Banking Machines (ABMs) are operational and that recovery and downtime are kept at a minimum, particularly during the upcoming Christmas season with the expected high demand for cash.

BOJ Deputy Governor, Dr Jide Lewis made the disclosure at the bank’s quarterly news briefing on Monday responding to questions from Our Today on the new service-level standards for ABMs, which came into effect in April this year. The standards were put in place in response to public backlash about the frequency of ABMs being out of service and the long time it takes to get them back into operation.

The manifestation of this problem was seen in the long lines and waiting times at those ABMs that were in operation. Dr Lewis brought good news, saying the BOJ is seeing much improvements in this regard, highlighting that the standards stipulate that 90% of all ABM operated by a deposit-taking institution (DTI) must be operational… “Right now the banks are operating at 94%, that’s pretty good; let’s see if they can bring that up to 96%,” Dr Lewis said.

He emphasized that the standards take into consideration that some ABMs will be out of service at times but seek to ensure that this is kept at a minimum, which is why the standards require 90% of the machines to be operational at any given time.

Faltering on uptime standards

In terms of uptime meaning how often machines have to be operational, Dr Lewis admitted that DTI’s haven’t reached the standard, which is 95%. “They are operating around 89-90% so there is still room for improvement there, so the uptime needs to be improved,” Lewis said. In terms of recovery time for ABMs, the BOJ Deputy Governor disclosed that this recovery time has fallen from about six hours to three hours overall. 

“It’s heading in the right direction but it’s still not at the one hour for urban and it’s at the three hours for rural. So the sector is heading in the right direction,” Dr Lewis explained. 

He made the point that during the upcoming Christmas demand for cash increases and therefore banks need to stock up on cash to meet this anticipated demand. He told the news briefing that the central bank will be working closely with the banking sector to ensure that DTIs are prepared to meet this demand.