Profit after tax surged 155 percent at Jamaica National Building Society, for the year to March 2014 to reach $2.3 billion from only $908 million in the previous year. The improvement came from revenues of $15.7 billion compared with $14.7 billion in 2013.
The 2013 result was negatively affected by a $830 million hit the group got from the government of Jamaica debt swap, where higher yielding bonds were exchanged for lower yielding ones, leading to a write down of market value of the bonds they held, at the time of the debt swap. But even without such one off charge, profit in 2014 would still have been up by a respectable 25.5 percent. To achieve the results, operating expenses were held to an increase of only 5.8 percent.
At the end of the March, assets climbed by 12.3 percent to $162.46 billion, from $144.6 billion at March 2013. Of the total assets, loans made up just $60 billion or 37 percent. There were mortgages approved but not yet disbursed amounting to $2.685 billion at the end of the year versus $2.344 billion at March 2013. Investment securities made up the bulk of the other assets. Equity capital stood at $26.8 billion and savers deposits at $86.6 billion.