Board pleased with performance of Lynx digital wallet

Durrant Pate/Contributor

Jamaica’s largest banking group, NCB Financial, is trumpeting its digital performance in 2022, as it seeks to lead a digital revolution across the island by modernising its operating model and exposing customers, staff and stakeholders to first-class digital processes and solutions.

For the 2022 financial year, the banking conglomerate spent a significant portion of its efforts devoted to honing its digital capabilities and bringing innovative digital solutions to market. Since the launch of its fintech subsidiary, TFOB in 2021, NCB Financial Group has made significant strides in its efforts to support the national agenda of promoting financial inclusion, while also bringing a first-class digital payment solution, Lynk, to the market.

In its just released 2022 Annual Report to shareholders, the banking group reports that, “to date, TFOB has enrolled over 170,000 wallet holders and 4,700 merchants to the payments platform and is currently the sole distributor of the Central Bank’s Digital Currency (CBDC) – JAM-DEX”.

As a result of its collaboration with the Bank of Jamaica, TFOB has distributed J$250 million in CBDC to wallet holders, as part of the national goal of proliferating access to financial services for the unbanked and the use of the new digital currency.

In addition, “we have also has gained notable traction in our ongoing push to migrate routine customer transactions from its banking halls to our electronic platforms, and as such, were able to consolidate its local footprint by closing five branch locations, while gaining cost efficiencies,” the bank states in its annual report to shareholders.

Beefing up Artificial Intelligence

NCB says it is continuing to develop and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-enabled solutions and capabilities across the group to improve operational efficiencies and service delivery. The banking group is reporting great success with Simone, its AI chat bot, launched in 2021.

To date, Simone has assisted customers in closing more than 200,000 sales and service transactions. Additional digital in-roads were made at NCB’s wealth management arm through the launch of the NCB Capital Markets mobile app, which now allows customers to carry out a wide range of enquires as well as to execute and track service requests and transactions in real time.

NCB reports that it is continuing to pay special attention to its business customers and ascribe a great deal of importance to its growth and success and as part of efforts to support this, NCB Assistbiz was launched. The NCB Assistbiz is an automated self-managed solution, that allows business customers to raise and track the resolution of service requests and complaints.

Improving economic conditions

Improving economic conditions in most of NCB’s operating territories augured well for the group’s performance during the current financial year. NCB Financial Group Limited reported consolidated net profit of J$39.9 billion for the financial year, ended September 30, 2022. Net profit attributable to stockholders amounted to J$27.3 billion, a 92 per cent or $13.1 billion increase when compared to the prior year.

NCB’s asset base increased to J$2.08 trillion, up eight per cent or J$161.6 billion primarily, due to increased investment securities and net loans. The growth in the asset base along with improved net profits resulted in return on average assets of 2.00 per cent compared to 1.08 per cent in the prior financial year.

Equity attributable to stockholders of the company declined by seven per cent or J$11.9 billion to J$149.5 billion with return on average equity of 17.59 per cent, up from 8.96 per cent in the prior financial year.