Lee-Chin plans to blanket Jamaica with ABMs

WESTERN BUREAU:

Banker Michael Lee-Chin, chairman of National Commercial Bank, Jamaica (NCBJ) says his financial group will be blanketing the island with automated banking machines (ABMs) as part of its effort to ensure that all Jamaicans have financial access within their reach.

“The plan is that we need to make sure that all Jamaicans have access to financial services, so we are not just going to be replacing, we want to make sure that we blanket the country with ABMs,” said Lee-Chin during a visit last week to Savanna-la-Mar, Westmoreland.

Lee-Chin’s commitment and assurance have come at a time in which customers are struggling to gain access to financial services as NCB and other financial institutions have closed some of their branches for various reasons, leaving customers with limited access to their money.

As Jamaica’s top bank, with assets of about $1 trillion, NCB has the largest network of banking machines, a fleet of more than 326 machines out of the 900 ATMs in total for all banks on the Multilink network run by collaborative agency JETS Limited.

But, as of March last year, the number of NCB machines had declined to about 300. In fact, a report from JETS was that the number was down to 290 for the month of May last year.

ATM ROBBERIES

Like other financial institutions, NCB has been hit in recent times by a spate of ATM robberies. Its machines in St Ann’s Bay, St Mary; Annotto Bay, St Mary; and Darliston and Little London, in Westmoreland, were all breached, resulting in some 25 machines being temporarily decommissioned at various locations following risk assessments.

Lee-Chin, who was in Westmoreland as part of his NCB’s Customer Blitz series, which is aimed at strengthening customer relations, including providing customers with an opportunity to directly interact with him and other senior executives, said access to financial services is important, and with that understanding, his financial group’s objective is to ensure that ABMs are strategically located across the island.

While he seemed quite upbeat by the plans to become more accessible to customers, Lee-Chin did not give any timeline for when out-of-service machines will be replaced and new ones installed.

“There are some challenges that we are working through, and so the short answer is yes,” Lee-Chin said in response to a question on plans to replace ATMs that were previously taken out of service due to robberies and other security concerns.

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