Sep 2010 Financial News

Scotia refocusing on customer convenience to grow business

Sep 01, 2010

Scotia Group Jamaica Limited says it will be refocusing on core business to grow its customer base, while making it more convenient for clients to do business with the bank as it de-emphasises trading and investment activities.

The chief target is high-value clients with big wallets.

A $922 million drop in net profit for the bank in the nine-month period ending July was pinned largely on the Jamaica Debt Exchange (JDX), the spark for the current and continuing fall in interest rates and lower margins.

"Everyone talks about the fact that the JDX was a game-changer; and we need to get back to what financial services in banking is, or was, and away from a lot of the heavy reliance upon securities and playing almost a treasury game to earn our money," said Scotia Group President and Chief Executive Officer Bruce Bowen at an investors briefing last Thursday.

To accomplish this, he said, Scotiabank has been investing resources in non-branch channels to boost sales and service delivery.

"If we are going to continue to grow our customer base, and particularly our high-value customers across the group, we need to make it more convenient than coming into Scotiabank branches," he said.

Investments

Bowen said a lot of investments would be going into building a 'mobile' sales team, Internet banking and customer contact centres, as well as improving basic transaction services external to the branch network - requiring "investments in our ATM network, investments in our points of sale network, investments in our internet banking platform," Bowen said.

Most recently, Scotiabank upgraded its Internet banking system to offer cross currency services, the bank president said.

Scotiabank Jamaica, the No 2 bank by assets, made profit of $7.7 billion in the nine-month period to July 30, a decline from $8.6 billion in the comparative 2009 period.


Source:
dionne.rose@gleanerjm.com
Jamaica Gleaner
Wednesday September 1, 2010

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