Still tracking at about a third of its intended target to reach one million members by 2026, the VM Group said it remains bullish on securing this milestone as it ramps up activities and undertake new initiatives.

Speaking at a recent Jamaica Observer Business Forum, CEO of the VM Group Courtney Campbell told reporters that the organisation has been working assiduously to deliver on the goal as it looks to beef up membership in and outside of the country.

“By 2026 we really expect to be serving one million members, helping them to become empowered to achieve financial well-being; there are some bottom line targets related to that, but at the end of the day that is the purpose-driven goal we have,” he stated.

“We’re progressing on the goal though not at the pace that we would have wanted, but certainly we have accelerated the pace of growth two times above what we were doing previously and we are very pleased with the uplift — we now have active members of just over 350,000 across the group,” Campbell said.

Following its historic restructure last year in which the 145-year-old member-owned institution established new financial and non-financial holding companies — VM Financial Group and VM Innovations Ltd, the group in its new era of operation said the focus now is to position the business for unprecedented growth and expansion. Fresh on its announcement to raise approximately $11 billion in new capital to strengthen its building society base and to crank up inorganic growth, the company is banking on the prospects that as it forges more partnerships and double down on new markets, the more likely it will also be for it to expand the membership base.

“The vision is also really an ambition that is steering us in a particular direction meant to accelerate the growth of the organisation and we are already achieving that by targeting new account openings across the group, reactivating existing dormant accounts [which now stands at over 500,000] and also by virtue of the inorganic growth that we have been pursuing in and outside of the region and throughout the Diaspora,” Campbell said.

“We have opened up several new channels in the last 100 years and these will significantly help us to push more products and services to market as we add new customers,” he added.

According to Judith Forth-Blake, group chief customer and brand officer, the response in the aftermath of the company’s rebranding exercise in 2021 has garnered “overwhelmingly positive feedback” from the market and customers. Feedback which she said has also largely helped the institution to meet its primary objective of changing the traditional image of being viewed as a mortgage company to now be seen as a full-fledge financial and non-financial services entity.

The roll-out of more electronic/digital products and other services, including auto loans, mortgages and IPOs, she said have also been pushing a number of younger clients to the organisation.

“We’re now attracting newer segments of the market as we continue to raise the profile of the company and build more awareness around our products and services. As a result of our efforts, we’ve been seeing where a younger segment of the market has started to take notice of VM, which was not the case as much before,” she said.

Targeting growth from its subsidiaries and the work of its foundation in communities islandwide, the CEO also pointed to areas such as its pension and remittance businesses among those portfolios primed to deliver significant growth and in helping to raise membership.

“Part of the growth forward will certainly come out of money transfer as the number of transactions across our just over 80 locations, continues to expand tremendously. A few years ago 12 per cent of our transactions were done electronically [direct to bank], now that’s over 30 per cent, and what this means is that more people are choosing to have their accounts electronically credited instead of visiting a physical location to pick-up their cash. We’re working on new onboarding facilities but we have already launched Lite, to facilitate new account opening for customers from anywhere,” Campbell said.

“We also want to facilitate a bigger programme for online onboarding for which our members and clients can onboard at one time while being able to get access to multiple accounts [such as a VMBS, VMIL, VM Pensions] opened across the group and that’s what we are currently working towards,” Group Chief Strategy Officer Carla McIntosh Gordon also said.