On October 9, the Senate approved the Jamaica Consumer and Competition Authority Act, 2026. The Act merges the Fair Trading Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC) into a single body, the Jamaica Consumer and Competition Authority (JCCA).
The Minister of Industry, Investment and Commerce, Senator Aubyn Hill, said he expects the transition to take six months or less. A Transformation Implementation Unit and a Steering Committee will manage it.
What changes, and what does not
For most businesses, the rules themselves do not appear to change. The new Authority takes over administering and enforcing the existing FTC and CAC Acts. What changes is who you deal with: one regulator instead of two, handling both consumer complaints and competition matters.
In our view, that matters more than it sounds. A combined regulator sees the full picture. A pattern of consumer complaints and a pricing or competition concern about the same company will now land on the same desk.
Parties who disagree with a finding of the Authority can appeal to the Supreme Court.
The penalties went down, but read them closely
The Act reduces several maximum penalties. Senator Hill gave one example: failing to answer a question previously carried up to $2 million and two years in prison. That is now up to $1 million and three months.
The Opposition objected that the maximum fine for failing to comply with a Tribunal order falls from $2 million to $500,000.
The lower numbers may tempt some boards to treat this as a non-event. We read it differently.
This is a technology question as much as a legal one
When a regulator asks about a customer complaint, the answer usually sits in several places: an email inbox, a WhatsApp chat on a staff member’s phone, a call recording, a spreadsheet, a point-of-sale system. Too often nobody owns the full record.
A few questions any management team can ask itself:
- If the Authority asked for every complaint you received in the last 12 months, how long would it take to produce them?
- Do complaints that come in by WhatsApp, social media or phone get logged anywhere?
- Can you show what price or terms a customer was offered on a given date?
- When a staff member leaves, do their customer messages leave with them?
- Who in the business is responsible for answering the regulator, and do they have access to the systems they need?
Complaint files also hold personal information, so the same records fall under the Data Protection Act. Good record keeping answers both regulators at once.
What to do during the transition
- Find out where your complaints actually come in, and make sure each channel feeds one log.
- Confirm how long you keep customer records, and that the period is written down.
- Name one person accountable for regulator requests.
- Test it: pick a complaint from six months ago and time how long it takes to pull the full history.
- Watch for the commencement date and any guidance the new Authority publishes.
Could your systems produce the record tomorrow?
If a regulator asked for the full history of one customer complaint, could you produce it, or would it depend on who happens to remember? We help organizations find out before the question is asked.
Begin a conversation →Sources: Jamaica Information Service, October 10, 2026; Jamaica Observer, October 4, 2026; Jamaica Observer, October 9, 2026. This article is general commentary and is not legal advice.