WITH more Filipinos having the capacity to buy smartphones, a bank is investing seven percent of its total revenue towards digital transformation.
Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) president and chief executive officer Cezar Consing said they are investing heavily in technology to follow where the market is heading.
“We still see a need to grow our branches. But there will come a point that IT and digitalization will be so advanced that there would be a need for branches to be reduced,” he said.
For now, they are also in the early phase of using bots for customer interaction.
Consing said they continue to meet challenges in terms of national development because the penetration rate of banking in the Philippines is low.
“Only 25 percent of Filipinos have bank accounts, while other sources (of financial services) are supplied by other pawnshops or 5-6 (informal lenders). We want to become more inclusive so we can address the needs of the Filipinos, and one important way of doing that is to try to use technology because if you were to just rely on brick and mortar branches, it’s very expensive,” he said.
The BPI president said they are beefing up their cybersecurity amid online attacks like phishing and hacking.
“It’s the downside of all this connectivity. Connectivity is growing at a faster rate than the ability to protect. We have a cybersecurity center that is one of the most sophisticated in the country,” he said.
Consing said the company is eyeing Cebu for its continuous expansion, and described it as “punching more than its weight,” because of the massive economic activity in the Visayas.
“If we are to keep pace with what Cebu offers, we have to increase capacity by 10 percent,” he said.
“In the last 10 to 20 years, Cebu businessmen have exported their skills to the rest of the country. The traditional Cebuano groups are now national and regional powerhouses, and if you look at our business, you could see that we followed that. Our business here has grown, as the Cebuanos have moved upward to basically influence what the rest of the country does,” he added.
In 2019, BPI will open more branches in Cebu City, with a few more branches in the cities of Tacloban, Tagbilaran and Ormoc.
BPI currently has 35 BPI bank branches, 12 BPI Family Savings branches and five Banko branches in Cebu.