Ja­maica Mon­ey Mar­ket Bro­kers (JMMB) made more prof­it out­side of Ja­maica than it did in its home coun­try.JMMB's as­so­ciate in T&T saw its as­set base climb from $13.7 bil­lion, as at March 31, 2009, to $23.8 bil­lion this year, while its prof­it grew from $89 mil­lion to $144.7 mil­lion over the five year pe­ri­od.The bank­ing group plans to ac­quire the re­main­ing 50 per cent stake in In­ter­com­mer­cial Bank­ing Group Lim­it­ed in T&T mak­ing it the sole own­er.

"Strate­gi­cal­ly, we are build­ing an in­te­grat­ed fi­nan­cial ser­vices mod­el with se­cu­ri­ties deal­ing, port­fo­lio man­age­ment, bank­ing and in­sur­ance," said Kei­th Dun­can, JMMB Group CEO. "In di­ver­si­fy­ing across ser­vices and the re­gion we are re­duc­ing risk across the board."JMMB ex­pects to roll out mu­tu­al fund prod­ucts in T&T by the end of this fi­nan­cial year, or by next April. In Ja­maica, a $750-mil­lion loss on the Na­tion­al Debt Ex­change (NDX) – the gov­ern­ment's swap of do­mes­tic debt, which took place in Feb­ru­ary – low­ered JMMB's op­er­at­ing prof­it from $2.8 bil­lion for the year end­ed March 31, 2012 to $1.7 bil­lion in its last fi­nan­cial year. In some re­spects, the de­cline re­flect­ed JMMB's high ex­po­sure to gov­ern­ment pa­per. The com­pa­ny held $91.6 bil­lion of its $166.9 bil­lion in as­sets in Ja­maican gov­ern­ment se­cu­ri­ties as at March 31.

How­ev­er, the $1.1 bil­lion the bank made over­seas is tes­ta­ment to the suc­cess of JMMB's di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion dri­ve – both ge­o­graph­i­cal­ly and across prod­uct lines.Growth in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, where the com­pa­ny of­fi­cial­ly launched in late 2007, has been stag­ger­ing.The op­er­a­tions there grew its as­set base from US$29.6 mil­lion, as at March 31, 2009, to US$174 mil­lion in 2013, when it post­ed net earn­ings of US$6.4 mil­lion ($640 mil­lion), up from US$1.2 mil­lion the year be­fore.