ABMs not meeting BOJs 'uptime' standards

The Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) says while more automated banking machines (ABMs) have been installed islandwide, the machines have not been meeting the "uptime" set out in its service level standards.

It told the Standing Finance Committee of parliament on Tuesday that 28 additional ABMs have been installed across the island, and banks have been meeting and exceeding the 90 per cent operation mandate set out by the BOJ in April.

However, the BOJ said it continues to dialogue with banks to fix the uptime issues as the Yuletide season gets underway.

"Uptime has to do with how long the ABM has been operational during the month; and entities have been hovering between 80 per cent and 90 per cent, which is below the standard of 95 per cent," explained Jide Lewis, deputy governor of the Financial Institutions Supervisory Division.

"That's where we have seen the performance requires improvement and we continue to dialogue with them regarding the reasons for that," he noted. "Primarily, we have understood that as they (banks) have changed out the old ABMs for newer ABMs, and they have been having issues in calibrating those new ABMs to the currency denominations and other factors."

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He said there has been a trade-off between more ABMs being installed and operations, against the amount of time that these machines are operational for.
 
In the meantime, Lewis noted that before the minimum implemented standards, a machine on average took more than ten hours to be restored after going off the system. It now takes just over three hours for out-of-service machines to be running again. 

- Corey Robinson