THE reach of the Philippine Veterans Bank (PVB)'s clients will be expanded from veterans to non-veterans as they shift from corporate to retail banking.
With originally 200,000 war veterans that fought and were involved during the World War 2, at present, there are only around 5,000 veterans living. These are at least 90 years old. Because there are lesser veterans that they can cater services to, PVB decided to rebrand all their branches nationwide.
According to their vice president and Corporate Consumer Relations Division head Miguel Angelo Villa-Real, they are also now going to render services to the retirees of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), whom he said are now called as the “modern-day heroes” as well.
He said, as long as the AFP personnel were discharged honorably from service or retired regularly, then he or she is considered a veteran.
Employees of the local government unit (LGU) and the businesses that support the LGUs are also the targeted market of PVB.
Villa-Real said they have two services available for the LGU employees and business: the deposit side and the loan side services. The deposit side include the cash management, how the salaries will be turned over to the employees, how the cash and cheque disbursement systems are being managed.
“We offer systems to them for free. Their cheque management and payroll are already automated especially that of the Human Resource services,” said Villa-Real. The loan side service, on the other hand, is foreseen to help barangays, municipalities, cities, and up to provincial government level through development projects.
He said their shift from corporate to retail services is through and because of a specific niche market as well. He said for now, they do not want to compete with the bigger banks and would want to look at the markets that are not that heavy in terms of competition yet.
“The training of our people has really been corporate banking. We are now shifting, not just from veterans to non-veterans, but also from corporate to retail. There’s a big challenge there because of the differences in terms of delivery of services, customer service, handling the problems of the customer, complaints and concerns, and so on and so forth. So we’re building that,” he said.
One of the reasons of the shift from corporate to retail is that the spread of income for corporate banking had become “very, very thin”.
Because the income of retail market – for salary loans, consumer loans, and interest loans – the spread of income is much higher. According to Villa-Real, this is one of the reasons of their shift.