Jamaica ABM Network Hits 96.2% Operational in February 2026 But JMMB Rural Recovery Time Reaches 17 Hours as Uptime Slips

• National ABM operational rate reaches 96.2%, highest of the post-Melissa recovery period
• System uptime slips to 92.1%, below BOJ’s 95% minimum for fifth consecutive month
• JMMB rural operational rate falls to 84.8% with an extraordinary 17.1-hour recovery average
• Hanover achieves full Hurricane Melissa recovery: from 62.5% uptime in December to 98.0%
• Trelawny and St Thomas also fully restored, with uptime above 96%
• KMA leads at 98.8% operational though uptime dips to 93.8% in February

February 2026 brought Jamaica’s ABM network to its highest operational rate since Hurricane Melissa struck — 96.2% of machines available across the island — but the uptime indicator told a more complicated story, slipping to 92.1% and remaining below the Bank of Jamaica’s compliance minimum for a fifth consecutive month, with JMMB’s rural recovery-time anomaly of 17.1 hours the sharpest single data point demanding explanation.

The Bank of Jamaica’s ABM Performance Report for February 2026 records 874 total machines with 841 operational, producing an operational percentage of 96.2% — the strongest reading in the post-Melissa recovery series and a genuine milestone in the network’s return to full capability. Average recovery time, however, worsened to 3.1 hours from January’s 1.7 hours — a divergence that warrants analysis — and uptime of 92.1% continued to fall short of the BOJ’s 95% minimum standard that has now remained unmet since October 2025.

JMMB’s Rural Anomaly: 84.8% Operational and a 17-Hour Recovery Average

The single most striking data point in February’s report is JMMB Bank’s rural operational performance: 84.8% of rural machines operational, with an average recovery time of 17.1 hours. Both figures are extraordinary by the standards of this data series. An operational rate of 84.8% falls below the BOJ’s minimum 90% threshold — the only institution-region combination in February to do so — while the 17.1-hour average recovery time is nearly six times the national average and more than five times JMMB’s own KMA recovery time of 1.9 hours. These are not minor deviations; they suggest a structural fault in JMMB’s rural fleet management that is materially different from the storm-related disruptions that have dominated the series since October 2025.

The BOJ data does not provide explanatory narratives for individual institution-region combinations beyond the standard disclaimers about data accuracy, so the specific cause of JMMB’s rural February underperformance cannot be definitively established from the published bulletin. Possible explanations include: a cluster of faults in a remote geographic area where parts supply logistics are extended; a shortage of field technicians in the rural network; or a hardware or software issue affecting multiple machines simultaneously that required specialist intervention. Whatever the cause, a 17.1-hour average recovery time means that when a rural JMMB machine went down in February, customers could expect it to remain unavailable for most of a working day — a significant service failure for communities with limited alternative ABM access.

At the other end of the institutional spectrum, JMMB’s KMA performance in February was solid at 96.2% operational and 90.9% uptime — and its overall uptime for all three regions combined appears to be dragged down substantially by the rural anomaly. The concentration of the problem in rural Jamaica rather than urban areas suggests that the institution’s service infrastructure has a geographic imbalance that requires attention if it is to meet the BOJ’s network-wide standards consistently.

Hanover, Trelawny, St Thomas: Full Hurricane Melissa Recovery Confirmed

Against the JMMB rural story, February’s parish data delivers some of the most encouraging readings in the entire post-Melissa recovery arc. Hanover — which recorded the worst ABM performance in the December 2025 series at just 78.8% operational and 62.5% uptime — reached 100.0% operational and 98.0% uptime in February 2026. The recovery arc for Hanover across three months is dramatic: December at 62.5% uptime, January (not separately reported at parish level), and now February at 98.0%. Hanover’s 5 surviving machines are now performing above the BOJ’s 95% uptime minimum, confirming that the parish has fully emerged from the hurricane’s operational shadow.

Trelawny achieved 100.0% operational and 96.1% uptime in February — a complete reversal from December’s 71.4% uptime, with the parish now meeting the BOJ’s compliance standard. St Thomas, which had also recorded just 72.0% uptime in December, reached 100.0% operational and 97.5% uptime in February — above the minimum threshold. These three western and eastern parishes represent the epicentre of Melissa’s telecommunications damage, and their return to full operational compliance is the clearest signal yet that the storm’s direct infrastructure impact has been substantially resolved outside of the specific areas where Scotia Bank’s permanently damaged machines were concentrated.

Portland achieved 100.0% operational and 97.6% uptime — strong for a rural northeastern parish. St Elizabeth continued its consistent above-compliance performance with 100.0% operational and 97.4% uptime, while Manchester delivered 100.0% operational and 95.2% uptime. The south coast and central parishes have been the most consistently reliable regions throughout the 2025-2026 series, reflecting the relative infrastructure stability of those areas.

Westmoreland and St Catherine: Remaining Uptime Concerns

While the Hanover and Trelawny recoveries represent good news for western Jamaica, Westmoreland — the westernmost parish — recorded 100.0% operational but just 86.2% uptime in February — well below the 95% minimum. At 86.2%, Westmoreland’s uptime suggests that machines are technically deployed but spending a disproportionate share of the month out of service, which points to either frequent but quickly-resolved faults, or less frequent but extended outages. The 86.2% uptime is the lowest parish-level reading in the February data series, and for a parish that is also affected by the wider western Jamaica telecommunications fragility exposed by Melissa, it warrants monitoring.

St Catherine, home to Jamaica’s second-largest urban conglomeration encompassing Spanish Town, Portmore, and Old Harbour, recorded 100.0% operational but 88.1% uptime — also below the BOJ minimum. St Catherine’s 95 machines represent one of the largest single-parish fleets, and a below-minimum uptime there affects a large absolute number of customers. The 88.1% reading suggests that the parish’s machines, while all deployed, are experiencing recurring downtime events that cumulatively exceed the BOJ threshold. This may reflect the high transaction volumes that St Catherine’s machines process — elevated demand accelerates mechanical wear and cash replenishment cycles, both of which contribute to uptime shortfalls.

KMA Leads at 98.8% Operational But Uptime Dips to 93.8%

Kingston and St Andrew’s metropolitan ABM network reached 98.8% operational in February — a near-perfect availability reading across the capital’s 320-machine fleet. Uptime of 93.8%, however, slipped slightly below the 95% threshold, marking a change from January’s above-minimum 96.4% uptime. The dip is modest and likely reflects a small number of machines experiencing extended downtime events during February rather than any systemic degradation in the capital’s service quality. The KMA’s 2.1-hour recovery time in February is above the national average but still reflects the resource density of the capital’s service infrastructure.

The broader urban network outside the KMA recorded 96.1% operational and 90.9% uptime, while the rural network posted 93.0% operational and 91.5% uptime. Both rural figures represent improvements over January’s readings, but both uptime figures remain below the 95% BOJ minimum, confirming that the uptime compliance gap continues to be driven by non-KMA performance rather than failures in the capital’s infrastructure.

Hurricane Melissa: Restoration Active Into Month Five

Bank of Nova Scotia’s February disclosure maintains the now-familiar language: “recovery from the impact of the passage of Hurricane Melissa continues, with downtime for the month of February impacted by continued telecommunication outages in some areas, as well as completed damage to several machines in their fleet.” The institution added that it is “actively collaborating with stakeholders to fully restore the fleet as quickly and safely as possible” — language that suggests the repair effort is proceeding but that full restoration remains outstanding.

The persistence of Melissa’s impact through a fifth reporting month — from October 2025 through February 2026 — is now one of the defining institutional stories of this data series. Scotia Bank’s consistent disclosure of ongoing telecom damage suggests that the last-mile connectivity restoration in certain areas of western Jamaica is taking longer than the early post-storm recovery timeline would have implied. The “actively collaborating with stakeholders” phrasing points to the multi-party nature of the challenge: ABM connectivity depends on telecommunications infrastructure that belongs to third-party network operators, and bank recovery teams can only remediate as fast as those operators restore the underlying links.

Recovery Time Divergence: A Network at Two Speeds

Perhaps the most analytically interesting feature of February’s data is the divergence between the improving operational rate (96.2%) and the worsening average recovery time (3.1 hours, up from 1.7 hours in January). In a well-functioning network, these two metrics should move in the same direction: fewer machines out of service, and faster restoration when outages do occur. The February disconnect — more machines deployed but slower recovery when they go down — points to a specific structural issue rather than systemic degradation.

The most likely explanation is the JMMB rural anomaly: the 17.1-hour rural recovery average is so far above all other readings that it likely skews the national average upward. If the JMMB rural recovery time is excluded as an outlier, the remaining network’s recovery performance would appear substantially better than the 3.1-hour headline suggests. This interpretation is consistent with the parish-level data, where most parishes report healthy performance figures, and the aggregate anomaly is concentrated in a specific institution-region combination rather than spread across the network.

Outlook: Approaching Full Recovery in March 2026

February 2026’s data presents a network that is very close to its pre-Melissa operational baseline in most of the country, with two specific outliers — JMMB’s rural performance and Scotia Bank’s ongoing telecom remediation — preventing a clean return to compliance on the uptime metric. If those outliers normalise in March — whether through JMMB addressing its rural service logistics or Scotia Bank completing its telecom restoration — the March 2026 report could deliver the first above-95% system uptime reading since September 2025. The direction of travel is encouraging; the question is whether February’s anomalies prove to be one-off events or persistent structural features of the 2026 landscape.

For Jamaica’s banking customers, the February 2026 ABM picture is the most stable and widely available it has been since the storm. The vast majority of Jamaicans — whether they live in the capital, in parish towns, or in rural communities — are now served by an ABM network performing at or near pre-storm levels. The persistent exceptions, concentrated in specific institutions and specific parishes, are important to document and address, but they do not alter the broader story of a sector that has demonstrated meaningful recovery capability in the face of significant natural disaster disruption.

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