JMMB Believes in ‘Fair Fees’
The JMMB Group welcomes the open dialogue that is currently taking place in Jamaica, around certain transaction fees that some local banks have been charging their clients. JMMB understands the need for financial institutions to charge fees and, yes, we at JMMB have fees of our own. However, we wish to take this opportunity to share our own guiding principles that we use to determine our fees, which have been the subject of much public discussion. To be clear, JMMB believes in fairness. As a company founded on the core value of love and standing for the best interest of all, our belief in fairness has always been part of our DNA, and impacts how we serve our clients.
Our main guiding principles around fees, are:
1. No ‘nuisance’ fees
We do not believe that our clients should be charged fees that can be deemed a nuisance to how they transact business with us. For example, JMMB does not charge a teller transaction fee to our clients who come into a JMMB Bank branch to deposit or withdraw funds from their bank accounts. We also do not charge an ATM usage fee to our clients who use a JMMB Bank ATM to withdraw funds; and, we have never charged a dormant account fee.
2. Fees for cost recovery
In our industry, other local and international financial institutions, charge their own fees for the services they provide; for example, the wire transfer fees charged by international banks. Of course, in those instances, JMMB has no control over those fees and, as such, they are passed on to our clients who use those services.
We also wish to clarify that, in light of the number of JMMB Bank ATMs in our network and the current need of our clients for increased access to cash; whenever our clients use their JMMB Bank Visa Debit card at any other local bank’s Visa-enabled ATM, we currently absorb the fees charged by those banks, and do not pass them on to our clients.
3. Fees for value-added services
For our customised financial solutions that have value-added components for clients, we will charge fees. For example, for clients who opt to take advantage of our portfolio management solutions, where our portfolio managers manage the investment portfolios on our clients’ behalf, a management fee is charged for that service.
4. Waiving fees when JMMB falls short of its service delivery
On those occasions when JMMB falls short on its service delivery to clients, we will seek to either waive or reimburse the relevant transaction fees for those clients who have been impacted. An example of this occurred in October 2020, where downtime of our online banking platform impacted our clients’ ability to initiate their personal transactions online. We took the step to waive certain fees for the duration of that downtime and reimbursed those clients who showed that they suffered third-party late fee charges, as a result.
Every year, JMMB actively reviews our fees, within the context of both our operations and the needs of our clients. Coming out of that annual review, fees are then removed, adjusted or new fees added, all done in alignment with the guiding principle of fairness in how fees are set, our core value of love and having our clients’ best interest at heart. This is who we are as an organization and we will not change.
If you would like more information on how you can open a JMMB account to join the JMMB family and partner with us to achieve your financial life goals, please click here to visit our account opening page