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Seeing a lot of people surprised by the fact that JN, NCB and JMMB are allowing looser requirements to open accounts and wondering why this wasn't possible before. They just couldn't. Explained this in May when FGB announced they were the first but will do so again.
Firstly, for years POCA meant that banks had to have KYC (Know Your Customer) regulations since at least 2007. I can't speak to before that but I think similar regulations were in place. Anyway, since then banks needed lots of info from applicants before they could open accounts.
But late last year, there were changes made to POCA that allowed financial institutions to put in place accounts that didn't require the regular documentation. See the screenshots from this: https://jis.gov.jm/house-approves-proceeds-of-crime-act-2019-regulations/
See this article in May 2020 also: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20200517/bankers-ease-account-opening-requirements
And this one about FGB: https://www.loopjamaica.com/content/gk-money-open-free-bank-accounts-some-care-programme-recipients
Additionally, this article makes mention of the difficulty the government had in paying out the funds of CARE because people didn't have bank accounts and the banks started freeing up: https://jis.gov.jm/more-than-500000-applications-for-covid-care-programme/
So as was shown, these banks could have all done this since at least May 2020 but they didn't want to. Only one did but specifically for CARE. Fortunately, NCB made use of the new regulations recently and the others are following suit.
People should note however that these aren't regular accounts. You cannot use them for a lot of money. It's really just to allow informal workers a chance to protect some of their money. You start lodging high amounts and it won't be pretty.
