New FirstCaribbean boss starts with aggressive pitch for market share
Published:Sunday | November 28, 2010 | 12:00 AM
Sabrina Gordon, Business Reporter
Nigel Holness, managing director of FirstCaribbean International Bank Jamaica (FCIBJ), is just three months into the job. He succeeded Clovis Metcalfe in September.
But by recent moves, it is clear that Holness is on a mission to aggressively grow market share and increase the bank's revenue, even if it means applying tactics not usual within Jamaica's banking sector.
Starting last week, FCIB Jamaica bombarded the print media with full-page advertisements trying to entice customers to "switch and gain" - a promotional campaign to lure customers to the bank while keeping existing ones.
"This campaign is meant for any new or existing client who wants to open a new account with us and receive special bonus offers for the life of this campaign," said Holness in an emailed response to Sunday Business.
In its switch-and-gain campaign, FCIBJ has tweaked four of its products, offering improved benefits such as cash back, bonuses, and no interest payment or annual fees.
On deposit and chequing accounts, customers are offered a US$50 bonus if a salary account is switched to the bank.
Cash back, along with other incentives, is also offered on both mortgage and car-loan accounts that are transferred.
The bank also recently added more products to its portfolio with the launch of a small-business credit-card line.
FCIBJ is set to release more products to the market in short order.
FCIB Jamaica operates in a market which currently has seven players with deposit base of $373.6 billion and assets totalling $579.8 billion at the end of June 2010.
Quiet player
National Commercial Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia by far dominate the sector, recording huge profits year on year.
But FCIB Jamaica has always been among the quiet players in the market, ranked the number-four commercial bank in the island.
It has a 10 per cent share of the loan market, controls just 8.5 per cent of total industry assets, and 6.8 per cent of deposits.
While profitable, in recent times, the bank has seen its bottom line shrink and revenue figures slip, a situation made worse in an environment with shrinking interest rates arising from the Jamaica Debt Exchange and downturn in the level of economic activity.
In fact, for the nine-month period up to July 2010, FCIB Jamaica posted net profits of $378.6 million, down by more than half the amount recorded for the similar period last year.
The bank's revenue was also down six per cent year on year.
Marginal gains were made in the bank's net-interest income, but its revenue streams are expected to be challenged going forward - a situation facing the sector generally.
In so far as Holness is concerned, now, his mission is to secure FirstCaribbean's position in the market.
Holness joined the New Kingston-based bank as a customer-service representative and worked his way up the corporate ladder.
He has worked with the bank for over 22 years, since 1988, specialising in foreign exchange and soft-currency liquidity in both Jamaica and Barbados.
Prior to his appointment, he held the post of treasury officer.
But as Holness makes his aggressive move, he not only has to contend with the dominant force that is NCB and Scotia - the two control more than 70 per cent of the industry - but will also have to deal with new competition -Jamaica National- now looking to enter the market, and possibly Jamaica Money Market Brokers.