Jul 2020 Financial News

NCB Financial Group Limited - Changes at its major Jamaican banking subsidiary, National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited

Jul 06, 2020

In May 2020, the National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (“NCB”) announced that by July 2020, it would be closing three branches and continuing the roll out of the branch model where cash transactions are facilitated exclusively via the 24/7 Bank on the Go areas in up to 14 branches.

CEO Bob Blake shared: “We piloted these changes pre-COVID and saw where the migration of cash transactions to alternative channels resulted in increased capacity of team members, which allowed for more meaningful connections with our customers and an overall enhanced service experience. Since our announcement, we have been listening to our customers. We will be improving the Bank on the Go facilities for our Annotto Bay and Half Moon customers; additionally, the Bank on the Go facilities will remain to service our customers in Chapelton. We have assigned additional resources in our Customer Care Centre and branches to better assist our customers in the online banking sign up process. We have also recently signed agreements with Digicel and Flow, which allow our customers to access our online banking, online investment, and Quisk solutions free of charge from their mobile devices. In addition, our Bank on the Go areas are available island-wide 24/7 and allow customers to deposit cash and cheques and pay utility bills and credit cards free of cost. ”

According to Blake, consultations with NCB’s Staff Association commenced prior to the May 2020 announcement.

“We have had extensive consultations with our Staff Association as we finalized the team changes that come with these operating model changes. While we have been able to redeploy some team members to new roles, 121 roles will become redundant beginning July 10, 2020. We have a number of measures in place to support our team members through this transition, and more broadly to ready our team for the new normal. Team members leaving the organisation will be able to access career counselling, training in areas such as software development, agile and digital marketing, seed funding for entrepreneurial pursuits and their full entitlement of benefits. Every single team member leaving remains a part of our family and has contributed to NCB’s legacy, and for that, we are forever grateful. Team members that remain with the organisation will also have access to counselling and will benefit from courses being rolled out by the organisation’s School of Digital Transformation and Analytics to prepare them for roles in our new operating model and more generally to thrive in the new economy.”

In closing, Blake shared: We are grateful for every team member and customer. We are still in very uncertain times and a new normal of constant change is firmly upon us. NCB will continue to make changes and evolve our business model in order to stay ahead of these unprecedented changes. We remain committed to elevating the standard of service we deliver to our customers, and remaining resilient and viable.”


Source:
The Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange Limited
Monday 6th July, 2020