In a move to claw back revenues lost under its money services division, large conglomerate GraceKennedy Limited (GK) is looking to double down on opportunities in the fast-growing digital remittance arena.

Newly appointed Group CEO Frank James, presiding over his first investor briefing held on Wednesday, told shareholders that this year the company will be making greater investments in digital technologies as it looks to combat current fallouts in the remittance segment.

“We are seeing where the remittance space is changing and so we will be making greater investments in digital technologies, which globally have been really transforming how this business works.”

“We’re actually now growing our digital remittance business, with growth climbing to approximately 44 per cent in 2024, which is a step in the right direction. When we look globally at remittances, digital represents about 52 per cent of inflows and coming into Jamaica, this represents just a little over 20 per cent which means that there is significant opportunity for us to grow digital in the local market. We have started on that journey and so far it has been going well,” James said.

The CEO is bullish on the GK One app, hailing it as a top digital wallet for sending digital remittances. The company plans to further integrate the platform, making it a core part of its future strategy. With users coming back to the app again and again, and its high rating in the app store, the CEO sees these as strong indicators that the app is gaining traction and growing in popularity.

“We have launched a remittance feature in our GK One app and also our first digital sub-agent through a partnership with Lynk and that is doing well. Digital is transforming the way we do remittance and there are other new things to come in 2025,” the CEO said. He outlined upcoming plans for roll-out of the multilingual app to other Caribbean territories.

“This year we will be entering into three new Caribbean territories with our remittance functionality as we look to take the GK One app to Trinidad and Tobago, Cayman and Guyana. We already have provisional approval from the regulators in those countries and so we are now looking forward to the launch,” he told shareholders during the online briefing.

Bullish on the retail side of remittance, James said the focus is also to increase GK’s footprint in this area with more distribution points. Through a partnership forged with Unicomer in 2023, the company has been seeking to add another 50 of its Western Union outlets in Courts stores islandwide.

“We are currently operational in about 20 Unicomer locations and that business is growing quite steadily and we expect to undertake an aggressive ramping up as we see this as a very promising partnership for our remittance business. Customers will also be seeing more and more of our remittance services available across our own Hi-Lo and First Global Bank locations as they too will have a window from which Western Union transactions can be processed,” James said.

GK’s Money services section, burned by reduced transaction activities and lower remittance volumes in some of its key markets such as Guyana last year, saw its portfolio falling some 2.5 per cent below that of the previous year. In 2024 total revenues from the segment amounted to $8.6 billion, the lowest in contribution of the company’s four key divisions— which saw the heavy weighted foods division accounting for the bulk of group out-turns— delivering over $131 billion of the $167 billion earned.

Remittances in Jamaica, which since 2021 during the pandemic period recorded strong growth of more than 10 per cent, has in the last few years experienced significant slowdown as global inflationary pressures weigh on migrant salaries impacting their ability to send funds back home. Remittance, which ranks as the second largest foreign exchange earner for the country behind tourism, on average contributes almost US$3 billion to the economy annually.

Notwithstanding the challenges, James said that while remittance coming into Jamaica continues to be flat, GK’s business has been witnessing some general improvement in its share of inbound volumes, especially those coming through digital channels, on which it plans to increase focus.

As the 103-year-old company looks to press forward with more of its digital transformation objectives the CEO said management is now proactively looking at how newer technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) can be integrated across the business.

“We have launched a team that is spearheading the review of AI across the group, both in foods and financial services. We also recently had out first-ever AI day as we start to get our team members to understand and get more comfortable with the technology. We have developed some new processes and this is going to be a big focus for the group as we drive the benefits of AI in creating efficiency and in helping us to make decisions in a more agile way,” James said.

“[The year] 2024 was a very active year which brought a lot of great things for the group, but we will be building on that momentum as we go further into 2025 and test a number of these and other new strategies aimed at driving greater growth,” he closed in saying.