JN Bank goes live February 1
Published:Friday | January 27, 2017 | 12:00 AM
Jamaica National Group will launch the new JN Bank on Wednesday, February 1, along with a fresh website to complement the conversion the 152-year-old building society to a commercial bank.
JN Bank will become the country's seventh commercial bank and the third largest, with assets of $180 billion and savings of $101 billion. It will be the only one owned by members.
Most of the bank's 34 locations have already been given fresh signage that will be unveiled on Wednesday, together with a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony at JN headquarters at Half-Way Tree Road in Kingston, Managing Director Maureen Hayden-Cater told Gleaner Business.
Ten of the bank's Money Shop outlets have been converted to full-service branches amid the changeover. The others will remain as Money Shops for now, Hayden-Cater said.
JN members voted for the transformation last November. JN Bank Limited also got the green light on its name from members at the meeting.
The change was heralded by customers who have, over the years, requested additional services that, as a building society, JN could not offer.
In the run-up to the changeover, the bank has been testing several products in the market since last year, among them a credit card and an unsecured personal loan facility capped at $1.5 million.
"Now, we are going fully into them," Hayden-Cater said, adding a wider rollout of the credit card will follow the official opening of the bank.
BLUE TAG PROMOTION
JN Bank also has a sales promotion, called Blue Tag, that will run until March 31, aimed at pitching its products to customers with added benefits and discounts.
"We are going to lower most of our interest rates; we'll be cutting the processing fees for mortgages," Hayden-Cater said of plans in the pipeline.
Jamaica National Building was founded back in 1864, having started out as Westmoreland Building Society. After a series of mergers which were characteristic of the society's growth strategy since its early formation, the name JNBS was adopted in 1970.
Its transformation to a commercial bank has been over eight years in the making.