Wednesday, March 18, 2009, Jamaica Observer

During the economic downturn Victoria Mutual Building Society (VMBS) has found a way to increase revenues via its ongoing campaign.
It has nearly 20,000 entrants enough to justify the $70 million in prizes and promotion.

“We have been experiencing increased business from point to point,” Hugh Reid chief operating officer told the Observer. “In terms of entries we have got close to 17,000 and it will possibly go towards 20,000.”

The recession may have reduced the number of entries, “As a financial institution you always want more people to invest,” he quipped.

Entrants are a mixture of old and new customers, each receiving 10 chances for every $25,000 deposited. The campaign finishes month end.

“The launch of the promotion during a crisis will increase our profile and market share. So this is the type of market activity you need to operate in a very challenging environment,” he explained of VMBS which still has its non-performing loans as a percentage of total assets “in single digits”.

It’s the latest mega campaign in Jamaica following the US$1 million campaigns by rival telecom companies back in December.

VMBS will offer as its first prize a $40 million mansion in Stony Hill; second prize is a full funded university education or a one-time payment of $5.8 million; third prize is a US$41,600 Scandinavian cruise and other prizes.

The campaign marks the 130- year anniversary of the institution. It was meant to bolster saving at the institution which has $4.4 billion in total capital.

“There are three main objectives for the campaign. This was a way of recognising customer faithfulness.

Second, the campaign will provide additional information about our customer preferences and habits (because) we ask customers to fill out information forms. It is so we can better sell and customise services for them. And third, it is designed to give our employees the ability to start a conversation about saving and investing to our customers in the branches.”

Up to December 31, 2008 the building society had 37 per cent of mortgage loans in the sector or $28.1 billion in mortgage loans of which $26.7 billion were residential.