Na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Bank Ja­maica Ltd (NCBJ) is un­der­go­ing an­oth­er lead­er­ship tran­si­tion with Bruce Bowen sched­uled to demit of­fice as CEO at the end of Feb­ru­ary, mark­ing the lat­est ex­ec­u­tive shift with­in the NCB Fi­nan­cial Group Ltd (NCBFG) struc­ture.

NCB chair­man Robert Almei­da com­mu­ni­cat­ed the de­vel­op­ment via email to staff on yes­ter­day, ad­vis­ing that Bowen’s fi­nal day in of­fice will be Feb­ru­ary 28, al­though he will pro­ceed on va­ca­tion leave ahead of that date. Bowen as­sumed the CEO role in Oc­to­ber 2023, re­plac­ing Sep­ti­mus Blake dur­ing a pe­ri­od char­ac­terised by mul­ti­ple lead­er­ship ad­just­ments across the wider NCBFG group.

“That phase of work is now large­ly com­plete, and as we move in­to the next stage of sus­tain­able growth, Bruce will be leav­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion on Feb­ru­ary 28, to pur­sue oth­er in­ter­ests,” Almei­da in­di­cat­ed in the in­ter­nal memo.

Bowen cur­rent­ly serves as chair­man of NCB Cap­i­tal Mar­kets Ltd and re­mains a di­rec­tor of NCBFG, Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL) and Clar­ien Bank Ltd, a sub­sidiary of Clar­ien Group Ltd. It re­mains un­clear whether the 64-year-old ex­ec­u­tive in­tends to re­lin­quish his seat on the board of GHL. NCBFG holds a con­trol­ling 61.77 per cent stake in the West­moor­ings-based in­sur­ance group.

NCB’s chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Sheree Mar­tin has been named in­ter­im CEO ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 19. Mar­tin, who be­comes the first woman to lead the Ja­maican bank.

“As we move for­ward, our em­pha­sis will con­tin­ue to be on dis­ci­plined ex­e­cu­tion, con­sis­tent val­ue cre­ation and shared ac­count­abil­i­ty, build­ing on the strong foun­da­tion al­ready in place,” the NCB chair­man not­ed.

Bowen’s pend­ing ex­it co­in­cides with un­re­solved fi­nan­cial oblig­a­tions linked to com­pa­nies as­so­ci­at­ed with NCBFG chair­man Michael Lee-Chin. Note­hold­ers are await­ing pay­ment of US$94 mil­lion which fell due on De­cem­ber 31, 2025 un­der a re­struc­tured debt arrange­ment ex­ceed­ing US$297 mil­lion. The en­ti­ties in­volved — Port­land (Bar­ba­dos) Ltd (PBL), AIC (Bar­ba­dos) and Spe­cial­ty Cof­fee In­vest­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (SCI)—re­main with­in a 45-day cure win­dow.

Lee-Chin re­cent­ly in­di­cat­ed that re­pay­ment op­tions un­der con­sid­er­a­tion in­clude full set­tle­ment of the US$297 mil­lion bal­ance, pay­ment of the im­me­di­ate US$94.1 mil­lion dur­ing the cure pe­ri­od, or di­vest­ment of his share­hold­ing in NCBFG. JCSD Trustee Ser­vices Ltd, act­ing as trustee for the note­hold­ers, dis­closed that the is­suer sig­nalled an in­ten­tion to re­mit funds by Jan­u­ary 26.

The nine-mem­ber ne­go­ti­at­ing com­mit­tee au­tho­rised to en­gage Lee-Chin met on Jan­u­ary 12 to de­ter­mine the way for­ward. Should pay­ment not be ef­fect­ed with­in the cure pe­ri­od, ac­cel­er­a­tion pro­vi­sions could be trig­gered, ren­der­ing the en­tire out­stand­ing bal­ance im­me­di­ate­ly due.

Sep­a­rate­ly, cost con­tain­ment has been iden­ti­fied in­ter­nal­ly as a ma­te­r­i­al dri­ver of share­hold­er val­ue.

At a re­cent staff en­gage­ment, it was sug­gest­ed that a ten per cent re­duc­tion in group op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es could trans­late in­to an ad­di­tion­al J$0.75 per share in quar­ter­ly div­i­dends from NCBFG. Con­sol­i­dat­ed op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es for the Sep­tem­ber 2025 fi­nan­cial year amount­ed to J$72 bil­lion (US$456 mil­lion), with staff costs ris­ing 14 per cent to J$30 bil­lion and ac­count­ing for 41 per cent of to­tal ex­pen­di­ture.

“Guys, we’re all in this to­geth­er. That’s why I said on the [De­cem­ber] 31st, I have some op­tions. One in­cludes sell­ing the bank, but I guar­an­tee you this, if I sell the bank, the next per­son who buys it is go­ing to make sure they get the J$7.2 bil­lion or J$15 bil­lion in ex­pense re­duc­tion. I guar­an­tee you that,” Lee-Chin told em­ploy­ees.