Hurricane Melissa Drives Jamaica ABM Uptime to 90.6% in October as Network Absorbs Storm Disruption

• Hurricane Melissa forces selective decommissioning and power outages across Jamaica’s ABM network
• National uptime falls to 90.6%, down from September’s 93.6%; 864 of 901 machines operational
• Average fault recovery time rises to 1.7 hours from 1.3 hours in September
• JN Bank recovers to 90.5% uptime from September’s catastrophic 76.9% low
• JMMB Bank uptime deteriorates to 88.4%, extending multi-month underperformance
• Sagicor Bank achieves near-perfect 99.0% uptime despite challenging storm conditions

Hurricane Melissa swept through Jamaica’s payment infrastructure in October 2025, forcing selective decommissioning of high-risk machines and causing sporadic power and telecommunications outages that drove national ABM uptime down to 90.6 percent — a meaningful retreat from the records set in September — while the network’s underlying operational discipline helped contain the damage to a manageable level rather than a systemic failure.

Jamaica’s network of 901 automated banking machines had 864 units operational in October 2025, producing a national operational rate of 95.9 percent and a national uptime of 90.6 percent, according to the Bank of Jamaica’s October 2025 ABM Performance Report. The average fault recovery time rose to 1.7 hours, up from 1.3 hours in September. Both the operational rate and the uptime represent a retreat from September’s record-setting performance, but in the context of a significant weather event, the network’s resilience is itself notable.

Hurricane Melissa: Jamaica’s ABM Network Under Weather Stress

The Bank of Jamaica’s October report explicitly attributes a portion of Scotiabank Jamaica’s downtime to the impact of Hurricane Melissa — specifically, to the selective decommissioning of machines in high-risk locations in advance of the storm’s arrival, combined with subsequent sporadic power and telecommunications outages in its wake. While the report’s narrative focuses on Scotiabank’s direct response, the hurricane’s effects on Jamaica’s power grid, internet infrastructure, and physical security environment almost certainly affected multiple institutions’ ABM operations during the storm period.

Hurricane Melissa represents the kind of exogenous shock that stress-tests the resilience frameworks of financial institutions across Jamaica. The decision to proactively decommission high-risk machines — rather than leaving them exposed to potential flooding, wind damage, or theft in the post-storm environment — is operationally prudent, even though it depresses uptime and operational statistics in the short term. The bank’s measured response reflects a mature risk management approach to natural hazards, prioritising asset protection and customer safety over month-end performance metrics.

The broader lesson from October’s hurricane-affected performance is that Jamaica’s ABM network, while increasingly sophisticated, remains exposed to the island’s vulnerability to tropical weather events. As the network’s operational role in the economy deepens — with ABM cash withdrawals rising 21.6 percent in value year-on-year through October 2025 — the importance of resilient power backup, hardened telecommunications, and robust pre-storm protocols becomes more critical. October’s data provides a useful stress-test baseline for what Jamaica’s ABM system looks like when confronting a significant weather event.

Regional Performance: KMA and Urban Areas Hold Firm

Despite the hurricane’s disruptions, Kingston Metropolitan Area machines held a 96.6 percent operational rate with 97.4 percent uptime — a strong performance that reflects both the density of banking infrastructure in the capital and the ability of the major institutions to restore service quickly after outages in urban environments where telecommunications and power restoration is typically faster than in rural areas.

Other Urban Areas similarly recorded a 96.6 percent operational rate with 96.0 percent uptime, holding its own against the storm’s effects. Rural Areas were harder hit, with an operational rate of 94.1 percent and uptime of 95.8 percent — a wider gap between the national headline and the rural performance that reflects the greater exposure of rural machines to extended power outages, the longer distances technicians must travel for repairs, and the relative scarcity of redundant telecommunications infrastructure in Jamaica’s interior and coastal rural communities.

JN Bank: Recovery After September’s Crisis

One of October’s more encouraging institutional developments is the partial recovery of JN Bank from its severe September performance. The institution’s uptime improved to 90.5 percent in October, a significant improvement from the 76.9 percent low recorded in September — the worst single-institution reading in the 2025 performance series. All of JN Bank’s machines were recorded as operational in October, suggesting that the September crisis reflected an uptime failure (machines were present but non-functional for extended periods) rather than a physical unavailability problem.

While 90.5 percent uptime is above the 76.9 percent crisis level, it remains below the 95+ percent threshold that would indicate a clean recovery to normal operating performance. JN Bank’s trajectory — June difficulty, August apparent recovery, September crash, October partial recovery — suggests the institution has not yet resolved the underlying infrastructure challenges driving its recurring uptime volatility. The bank’s customer base, which skews toward community banking segments with fewer alternative access points, will be sensitive to continued service quality variability.

JMMB Bank: Multi-Month Underperformance Deepens

In a concerning development, JMMB Bank’s uptime deteriorated further in October, falling to 88.4 percent from September’s 92.4 percent — itself still below the 95+ percent range that had characterised the institution’s performance in earlier months of the year. The 88.4 percent figure represents the second-weakest reading JMMB has posted in 2025, following August’s low of 83.4 percent.

JMMB’s continued struggle with uptime consistency across the July-to-October period points to a persistent operational challenge that has not been resolved by the incremental improvement seen in September. Whether this reflects hardware ageing, back-office system issues, cash supply management challenges, or connectivity problems, the duration of the underperformance period now warrants a more structural explanation than any single-month anomaly could provide. JMMB Bank has been building its retail banking presence actively in recent years, expanding both its branch network and its ABM footprint; the uptime challenges may partly reflect the growing pains of managing a larger and more geographically dispersed machine fleet.

Outstanding Performances Amid Storm Conditions

Sagicor Bank delivered the standout performance of October, recording 100 percent operational status and an exceptional uptime of 99.0 percent — a near-perfect result in a month when Hurricane Melissa was disrupting operations across the island. The 0.4-hour average recovery time is the fastest of any institution in October’s data, reflecting a technical support capability and operational discipline that sets a benchmark for the industry. For a mid-sized financial institution, Sagicor’s consistent ability to achieve near-perfect uptime month after month is a significant competitive and operational achievement.

NCB Jamaica recorded 100 percent operational status and 94.8 percent uptime, with a notably elevated average recovery time of 4.6 hours. This recovery time is the longest of any institution in October’s data and suggests that while NCB’s machines were available (100 percent operational), faults that did occur took substantially longer to resolve than those of its peers. For a network as large as NCB’s — the most extensive ABM fleet in Jamaica — a 4.6-hour average recovery time across a hurricane-affected October is not surprising, but it is worth monitoring in subsequent months to determine whether it reverts to NCB’s typical shorter recovery profile.

First Global Bank recorded 99.1 percent operational status and 94.6 percent uptime, maintaining a solid performance despite October’s conditions. CIBC Caribbean recorded 94.7 percent operational status and 90.6 percent uptime, with a 3.1-hour recovery time reflecting the cumulative effect of the storm on its machine fleet. Victoria Mutual Building Society posted 90.6 percent operational status with 95.8 percent uptime — the operational rate is the lowest of the major institutions in October, suggesting some machines were taken offline during the storm period.

What October’s Data Means for Jamaica’s Financial Infrastructure

The October ABM performance data should be interpreted primarily through the lens of Hurricane Melissa’s disruption. The national uptime of 90.6 percent — while lower than September’s 93.6 percent and August’s 93.8 percent — is not alarming in isolation when the operating environment included a significant tropical weather event. The more relevant question is whether, once the post-storm recovery period concludes, Jamaica’s ABM network returns to the improving trajectory that has characterised 2025 overall.

The hurricane also highlights the economic cost of weather-related payment disruptions. As Jamaica’s ABM network becomes more deeply embedded in the country’s cash access and payment infrastructure — with JMD ABM withdrawals growing more than 21 percent in value through October 2025 — the resilience of that network in the face of natural hazards becomes a matter not merely of banking convenience but of economic continuity. Access to cash during and after a hurricane is essential for consumers purchasing food, fuel, and emergency supplies in the informal markets that remain a critical part of Jamaica’s disaster response economy.

For regulators and financial institutions planning their ABM network investments for 2026, the October data reinforces the case for backup power systems, satellite connectivity options, and pre-positioned technical support capacity in the hurricane season months. Jamaica’s exposure to tropical weather systems is not an occasional risk — it is a perennial one, and the ABM infrastructure investment case must incorporate that reality explicitly.

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