The GK One app, being touted as a number one digital pockets when used for digital remittances, is to type a key a part of how the corporate will remodel the native panorama.
In a transfer to claw again revenues misplaced below its cash companies division, giant conglomerate GraceKennedy Restricted (GK) is seeking to double down on alternatives within the fast-growing digital remittance enviornment.
Newly appointed Group CEO Frank James, presiding over his first investor briefing held on Wednesday, advised shareholders that this yr the corporate can be making better investments in digital applied sciences because it seems to fight present fallouts within the remittance phase.
“We’re seeing the place the remittance house is altering and so we can be making better investments in digital applied sciences, which globally have been actually remodeling how this enterprise works.”
“We’re truly now rising our digital remittance enterprise, with progress climbing to roughly 44 per cent in 2024, which is a step in the correct course. Once we look globally at remittances, digital represents about 52 per cent of inflows and coming into Jamaica, this represents just a bit over 20 per cent which implies that there’s important alternative for us to develop digital within the native market. Now we have began on that journey and thus far it has been going nicely,” James mentioned.
The CEO is bullish on the GK One app, hailing it as a high digital pockets for sending digital remittances. The corporate plans to additional combine the platform, making it a core a part of its future technique. With customers coming again to the app many times, and its excessive score within the app retailer, the CEO sees these as robust indicators that the app is gaining traction and rising in reputation.
“Now we have launched a remittance characteristic in our GK One app and in addition our first digital sub-agent by means of a partnership with Lynk and that’s doing nicely. Digital is remodeling the way in which we do remittance and there are different new issues to return in 2025,” the CEO mentioned. He outlined upcoming plans for roll-out of the multilingual app to different Caribbean territories.
“This yr we can be getting into into three new Caribbean territories with our remittance performance as we glance to take the GK One app to Trinidad and Tobago, Cayman and Guyana. We have already got provisional approval from the regulators in these nations and so we are actually trying ahead to the launch,” he advised shareholders in the course of the on-line briefing.
Bullish on the retail facet of remittance, James mentioned the main target can also be to extend GK’s footprint on this space with extra distribution factors. Via a partnership solid with Unicomer in 2023, the corporate has been searching for so as to add one other 50 of its Western Union retailers in Courts shops islandwide.
“We’re at present operational in about 20 Unicomer areas and that enterprise is rising fairly steadily and we count on to undertake an aggressive ramping up as we see this as a really promising partnership for our remittance enterprise. Prospects may also be seeing increasingly more of our remittance companies obtainable throughout our personal Hello-Lo and First World Financial institution areas as they too can have a window from which Western Union transactions might be processed,” James mentioned.
GK’s Cash companies part, burned by diminished transaction actions and decrease remittance volumes in a few of its key markets equivalent to Guyana final yr, noticed its portfolio falling some 2.5 per cent beneath that of the earlier yr. In 2024 complete revenues from the phase amounted to $8.6 billion, the bottom in contribution of the corporate’s 4 key divisions— which noticed the heavy weighted meals division accounting for the majority of group out-turns— delivering over $131 billion of the $167 billion earned.
Remittances in Jamaica, which since 2021 in the course of the pandemic interval recorded robust progress of greater than 10 per cent, has in the previous few years skilled important slowdown as world inflationary pressures weigh on migrant salaries impacting their capability to ship funds again house. Remittance, which ranks because the second largest international trade earner for the nation behind tourism, on common contributes nearly US$3 billion to the economic system yearly.
However the challenges, James mentioned that whereas remittance coming into Jamaica continues to be flat, GK’s enterprise has been witnessing some normal enchancment in its share of inbound volumes, particularly these coming by means of digital channels, on which it plans to extend focus.
Because the 103-year-old firm seems to press ahead with extra of its digital transformation goals the CEO mentioned administration is now proactively how newer applied sciences equivalent to synthetic intelligence (AI) might be built-in throughout the enterprise.
“Now we have launched a workforce that’s spearheading the assessment of AI throughout the group, each in meals and monetary companies. We additionally not too long ago had out first-ever AI day as we begin to get our workforce members to grasp and get extra comfy with the know-how. Now we have developed some new processes and that is going to be an enormous focus for the group as we drive the advantages of AI in creating effectivity and in serving to us to make choices in a extra agile means,” James mentioned.
“[The year] 2024 was a really lively yr which introduced lots of nice issues for the group, however we can be constructing on that momentum as we go additional into 2025 and take a look at various these and different new methods aimed toward driving better progress,” he closed in saying.
