Perrin Gayle, a former executive at Scotia Group Jamaica (SGJ), has joined National Commercial Bank Jamaica Limited (NCBJ) as executive vice-president of retail banking, effective immediately.

Gayle began in his new role three days after his resignation took effect at Scotia Group Jamaica Limited (SGJ). Gayle was promoted on November 1 to executive vice-president of retail and small business banking and acting head of retail (Caribbean and Central America) at Scotia Group Jamaica. That was less than three years after he was promoted to head of retail banking and small business for Scotiabank Caribbean North and Central comprising The Bahamas, Cayman, Jamaica and Turks & Caicos.

Gayle became the head of retail banking at SGJ in January 2021 after Audrey Tugwell Henry was promoted to the role of president and CEO. Tugwell Henry had overseen retail banking at the Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica Limited (BNSJ) since September 2017 and did a nine-year stint at NCBJ as the senior general manager of retail banking. She was previously the senior vice-president of retail and electronic banking for eight years at BNSJ.

Gayle’s move to NCBJ will see him managing a portfolio for retail banking, wealth distribution, NCB Insurance Agency, payments and digital channels and group marketing and communications. His arrival resulted in Sheree Martin, the previous incumbent leader of the portfolio since April 2021, transitioning to the role of EVP – chief operating officer. This role will see Martin being responsible for group information technology, group underwriting and credit support, enterprise operations, enterprise information management and supply chain management functions. One such executive who would be reporting to Martin is Anne McMorris-Cover.

Also, it was announced that Saravanan Thangavelu’s role at NCBJ would be chief technology officer and would lead the group’s information technology division. His arrival at NCBJ coincided with the departure of Ramon Lewis, who was the chief information officer.

All of these changes come at a time when NCBJ and the larger NCB Financial Group Limited (NCBFG) are continuing to transform under the EGC (efficiency, governance and customer experience) mandate of NCBFG Chairman Michael Lee-Chin which began in the 2023 financial year (FY). That period saw the departure of several senior leaders and arrival of Robert Almeida as NCBFG CEO and Bruce Bowen as NCBJ CEO.

NCBFG and NCBJ built greater independence to their board structures with NCBFG’s board now heavily stacked with Canadians. NCBJ even created a new wealth management division to be headed former Scotiabank executive Dr Kariann Hepburn Malcolm, who joined in December 2023.

Bowen had previously served as CEO of SGJ between November 2008 to September 2013. He remained with the Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotiabank) up to May 2016 when he left at 55 years old. Bowen then formed Rock Mobile Limited in April 2019 as a mobile and fixed broadband internet provider. Rock Mobile won the rights to the 700MHz band in 2021.

NCBJ is Jamaica’s largest commercial bank with $938.70 billion in total assets and $455.96 billion in loans and advances as of September 30, but Scotiabank Jamaica remains Jamaica’s most profitable commercial bank with $15.58 billion in net profit for its 2024 FY ending October 31.

NCBJ’s net profit improved 21 per cent from a restated $7.71 billion ($8.50 billion previously) in 2023 to $9.31 billion for 2024. However, the 2023 FY had a number of one-off expenses, which included an extra $1.58 billion in separation costs for the period. NCBJ’s 2022 net profit at $13.96 billion would have been the last period when there were no major one-off expenses.

However, NCBJ’s operational losses have jumped from $551.42 million in 2022 to $4.37 billion in 2024. It should be of keen note that NCBJ’s 2023 operational losses were adjusted from $2.24 billion to $3.42 billion.

NCBJ’s loan book only grew a little over 1.70 per cent or $8.76 billion in 2024 to $455.96 billion. NCBJ saw write-offs on loans and advances move from $968.54 million in 2019 to $6.07 billion in 2024, with the 2024 credit risk model on loans and advances having $1.89 billion in write-offs and $2.70 billion in derecognised financial assets on stage three of the financial model. Non-performing loans (NPLs) on which interest was not being accrued was $7.87 billion or 2.32 per cent of gross loans in 2019 and stood at $13.43 billion or 2.88 per cent of gross loans in 2024.

However, according to a Caricris report (Caribbean Information & Credit Rating Services Limited), NCBJ’s NPLs to gross loans was 3.2 per cent as of June 2024, which was above the Jamaican commercial bank average of 2.4 per cent, but below the regional banking group of 5.4 per cent. Caricris reaffirmed NCBJ’s ‘good creditworthiness’ with ratings of CariA (foreign currency rating) and CariA+ (local currency rating).

“In an effort to reduce NPLs and delinquencies, NCBJ is engaged in several mitigation strategies including growing its digital loans portfolio, discontinuing products where collections are minimal and improving efficiency in delinquency management. Given these strategies employed, CariCRIS does not expect any significant worsening of the Bank’s NPL ratio over the next 12 to 15 months,” stated the recently released Caricris report.

The report mentioned that NCBJ automated its Know Your Customer (KYC) financial disclosure system over the last year and that the bank’s platform uptime was 99.9 per cent up to June 2024. NCBJ was also stated to have implemented a new credit processing system which should improve the efficiency of credit operations and has continued on a phased upgrade of its treasury management system. NCBJ’s capital/equity was also at $109.89 billion in September 2024 while its deposit base topped $569.13 billion.