Through the launch of a major rebranding exercise which goes live today, the VM Group is seeking to make its business more visible to the public and more effective as it adds new products, grow membership and increase revenues for less popular subsidiaries.

President and chief executive officer (CEO) of the VM Group Courtney Campbell at a forum with the Jamaica Observer said that the diversification process, which started some 20 years ago, has culminated with a fresh image and a new set of strategic objectives which all seeks to grow revenues and further position the company among top rated financial institutions across the globe.

“We started the process of diversification from as far back as the 1980s but that process has now gathered momentum as we have done so much work in building out new products, new business lines and have introduced new channels to serve our members. We are no more just a building society doing mortgages and savings but have evolved in offering so much more services,” Campbell said during an exclusive sit down with the Business Observer on Monday.

The 143-year-old institution, which has over the years transformed its core business primarily operated as a building society, today offers a range of other services including investments, insurance, wealth and pension funds management among other holdings.

“All of these services that we have that are offered through different strategic business units (SBUs), we really just want to bring them under one umbrella, so when people think about VM, they not only think of mortgages and savings,” added Judith Forth Blake, group chief customer and brand officer. She added that each subsidiary with “different look, different feel” resulted in people not connecting all the subsidiaries to the VM Group.

The CEO who refrained from quoting a fixed cost for the rebranding exercise, dubbed the project an expensive venture which he said remains ongoing, and from which the business was expecting to reap great returns. “We believe that it will pay off in terms of the increased businesses especially for those products that people are not readily associated with.”

“This is a long-term investment we are doing and we’re very confident about the messaging and we’re very confident that the people will receive what we intend to convey,” Campbell stated.

Through its bright grapefruit and white themed logo powered by the tagline ‘Transform your everyday’, the rebranding seeks to create a more rounded aesthetic appeal for the VM Group and one which customers and the general public can easily relate to.

Pegged to the wider transformation project is also a plan to increase the membership base to one million, an objective the CEO said the group is seeking to attain through a multipronged approach, which includes the reactivation of several dormant accounts and targetting the diaspora and expansion in the region. Currently VM Group has a membership of 320,000.

“We are also doing some work to make account opening easier as we introduce a referral programme internally to encourage not only our team members but even our members to refer their families and friends. This will really kick off in January next year, but we are starting some of the work now,” Campbell said.

Through the large-scale restructuring of its services, the VM Group is to become the umbrella holding company further subdivided into the VM Financial Group comprising all of eight financial subsidiaries on one hand and the non-financial services such as property services, the VM foundation and fintech arm VM Innovations, on the other hand. This restructuring exercise, the company expects to complete in 2022 following, the requisite court and regulatory approvals.