FGB grows banking agent network to 13, three more to come
Published:Friday | August 13, 2021 | 12:10 AM
First Global Bank, FGB, has opened two more First Global Money Link outlets, bringing the network of banking agent locations to 13.
The commercial bank owned by the GraceKennedy group says three more agent banking windows will be opened during this year, but that it would not disclose the locations at this time.
The two most recent Money Link outlets have been set up to serve the unbanked and underbanked populations of Highgate, St Mary and Albert Town, Trelawny.
The banking windows are part of a suite of business services GraceKennedy Financial offers in parishes through the GK One network. Other services provided by GK One include remittance and bill payment services through Bill Express, Western Union, FX Trader, as well as microlender GK Proxim.
Money Link allows customers to deposit up to $250,000 in FGB accounts, withdraw up to $100,000, conduct credit card payments, and to complete balance enquiries.
GK Financial has not disclosed its financial targets for the business model, which was first introduced in 2018, but it serves two objectives: financial inclusion; and driving up volumes for First Global Bank among populaces that are hard to reach from its own brick-and-mortar branches.
“We’re expanding to deliver financial inclusion to our communities where a ‘one size fits all’ commercial institution does not answer the call of the unbanked or underbanked individual,” FGB President and CEO Mariame McIntosh Robinson said in a release on the expansion.
First Global is the second-smallest commercial bank in Jamaica, with assets of $65 billion, including a $29-billion loan book, based on its 2020 financial data.
FGB had set itself a target of 30 Money Link locations over the period 2019 and 2020, and then to get to 100 locations through a network of agents or third-party operators by 2022, when the GraceKennedy conglomerate celebrates its 100th anniversary.
COVID-19, among other factors, has thrown off those timelines, but FGB, in its release, reaffirmed its commitment to the expansion drive for the agent locations.
“Despite the present reality of a pandemic, we determined that the value proposition for First Global Money Link rests upon giving our clients access to ‘more’. More convenience, more products with simplified requirements, more value, and certainly our biggest sell – innovation,” McIntosh Robinson said in the release.
UPDATE: A comment was inserted in this story from First Global Bank. Consequently, the sentence that the company had not commented was removed.