Having realised the success of deft strategic implementation in 2025, the NCB Financial Group executive team is cautiously optimistic for accelerated growth in financial year 2026.

Group CEO Robert Almeida shared his outlook on the prospects for the financial services group during the livestream of Mayberry Investments Limited’s Investor Forum on Friday, November 21. He, however, provided context for the executives’ forecast, pointing to the transformation of the NCBFG over the past two years, starting in July 2023.

“We spent the last two years doing a turnaround…but it was a major undertaking; a turnaround of our capital and our financial position, our earnings power, but also our physical plant, our technology platform, the human capital base, and customer experience. So, a number of different dimensions, and all for the purpose of getting ourselves into a position where we get to now,” Almeida shared.

“And so we ended September coming out thinking, okay, we’re ready to accelerate now, and we are…But what we hadn’t kind of counted on was that it meant that we’d built a resilient foundation and we hadn’t anticipated Hurricane Melissa and the importance of being in the position we are right now so that we can actually respond to the test, respond to the challenge, and work to build; not just to build back, but to build back better for the country,” he added.

NCBFG completed financial year 2025 with consolidated net profits up by 71 per cent, amounting to $36.91 billion. Net profit attributable to shareholders totalled $23.1 billion, increasing by 73 per cent. 

During the last two years, the group has embarked on reducing its efficiency ratio, which resulted in costs for the year being at 64.29 per cent of income compared with 73.56 per cent at year-end 2024.

With the exception of commercial and corporate banking and consumer and SME services, all other segments in the group improved their results. According to Group CFO Malcolm Sadler, a decline in the banking operations’ loan book resulted in a decline in earnings, while higher credit losses contributed to reduced earnings in the consumer and SME services segment.

Despite the decline in the banking segment, Almeida is bullish that it will be a winner in the new financial year. Responding to a question from Mayberry Investments CEO Patrick Bataille on where he most anticipates growth, the NCBFG CEO highlighted the potential of the banking and investments division.

“The strongest earning growth is probably going to be in actually in the banking parts of the business. So, I think corporate, actually—so if we just talk about Hurricane Melissa for a moment. So, without Hurricane Melissa, I would have said it would be relatively balanced. There was no particular part of the business that we were expecting to accelerate more, maybe wealth management,” Almeida explained. “But with Hurricane Melissa, I really expect the corporate and investment banking part of the business to grow faster.”

Almeida noted that based on the physical damage to properties, occasioned by Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in Jamaica on October 28, there will be increased demand for financing the rebuilding process. He added that NCBFG will play a role in the recovery efforts, pointing to the Group’s efforts over the last two year to strengthen its capital base and improve its liquidity position. 

Head of NCB Capital Markets, Angus Young, also commented on the progress of the Group and its positioning for accelerated growth, noting that in the investment space, NCB Capital Markets has a significant market share.

“From January to September 2025, NCB Capital Markets has done 20 per cent of the number of transactions done in the domestic capital market space, but dollar-wise is 47 per cent…Now, we’ve done two very significant things to poise the bank to take advantage of what Rob was speaking about, and that is, one, we’ve merged the corporate and investment banking divisions. So we bring two very large revenue-generating divisions within the banking system, operationally merge them, and therefore we have this agnostic behaviour where we approach transactions as one,” he said.

The merger, Young explained, has created synergies between the units, such as streamlining, maintaining margins, and enhancing the entity’s sales and onboarding efforts. With these results, NCBFG is in the process of creating an investment management centre of excellence. As part of the process of developing the centre of excellence, NCBFG transferred the NCB Insurance Agency and Fund Managers subsidiary to Guardian Holdings.

“We acknowledge that in the past we have operated in a very siloed fashion within NCB and within NCBFG, and over the last to years what we’ve been doing is smashing those silos. So, what we did, in effect, long story short, is that we realised that Guardian had the very best pension administrators. Given the people and the IT systems that they possess, they are best poised to administer pension plans,” Young outlined.

“Then we see NCB Capital Markets portfolio management skillsets and talent is the ideal place to have portfolio management take place. So, in effect, what we did is move all pension plan administration within the NCB Financial Group, with the exception of Clarien, to Guardian. And we’ve moved all the portfolio management within the NCB Financial Group, with the exception of Clarien, to NCB Capital Markets,” he continued.

For Young, this restructuring will result in further continuity, economies of scale and better ability to negotiate. Moreover, he said that the real benefits of creating the centres of excellence will be realised in financial year 2026.