A N N UA L
R E P O R T
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PARTNERING WITH SMES
THROUGHOUT THE PANDEMIC OUR COMMITMENT TO SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES THROUGHOUT THE PANDEMIC Financial year 2020/2021, a year like none other, was hard on families, schools, churches and businesses. As we all sought to navigate government implemented measures aimed at arresting the spread of COVID-19, many small and medium businesses wrestled with reducing, managing and, in some cases, closing their operations entirely. Our strategy as a Group placed key emphasis on protecting clients’ goals and for small and medium enterprises. We were acutely aware that this would mean extra coaching and support, tangible resource support and an unwavering commitment to partnership and redefining the way businesses are supported at every stage of their life cycle. With this, our teams across the region pivoted our strategy and operations in order to partner with, and meet the needs of our SME clients during the difficult period. CLIENT PROTECTION & PARTNERSHIP For the first half of the year, our focus was squarely on ensuring the safety of our teams as they partnered with clients remotely, in branch and via the Group’s Resource Centre. With the many constraints imposed due to capacity and movement restrictions, our initiatives focused on ensuring that our onboarding process was easy and that our client support framework was robust, accessible digitally and the process of doing business with us was improved. We also ensured our teams were equipped through continuous training to deliver advisory services, coaching and support to clients at differing stages of their business’ life cycle as they adjusted during the period. Most importantly, noting that debt financing would be critical for businesses as their business models shifted and their revenues were affected, we continued work on refining our credit adjudication
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framework to ensure that financing is more accessible for businesses at differing life cycle stages.
EASY CLIENT ONBOARDING AND IMPROVED PROCESSES FOR DOING BUSINESS WITH US
IMPROVED DIGITAL SERVICES, SOLUTIONS AND ACCESSIBILITY
MAKING IT EASIER TO ACCESS DEBT FINANCING
PARTNERSHIP IN ACTION – JMMB GROUP SME RESOURCE CENTRE The Group’s Resource Centre was a particularly important channel during the period as it remained a critical touch point for clients and was the source of a wealth of information and provided access to tools to help clients scale and manage their operations. Having officially launched in Jamaica in May 2020 and in Trinidad in July 2020, the Resource Centre team, who received a collective 96.5% client satisfaction rating during the year, was able to: • Successfully launch SME Pulse newsletter and issue four (4) publications for the year • Successfully execute 25 virtual events and take part in 56 external events aimed at supporting businesses in a variety of areas from funding options, to tax management financial reports and corporate governance
