Catch up
TECHNICALLY, BPI is playing catch-up with its competitors which have established footholds in other countries since the sixties.
For instance, in August 1963, Equitable Banking Corp., the firm that bought and merged with Philippine Commercial International Bank in 1999, established its full service branch in Hong Kong. It was the first bank in the country to have foreign operations to cater mostly to Filipino-Chinese businessmen.
Currently, EPCIB has 27 remittance centers and a network of 300 correspondent banks, mostly in the US.
It took BPI more than a decade in 1974 to establish its own branch in Hong Kong to tap the same customers that Equitable and other Philippine banks had already mapped out over those years.
In the US market, for one, BPI only has a remittance center while Metrobank, Philippine National Bank, and even Allied Banking Corp., through a stake in a US bank, have already established full branches there since the eighties.
Reviewing Metrobank’s financial statement for 2006 reveals that the contribution of its US operations to its total revenues only accounts for a mere 1.28 percent. But this performance contributes 2.7 percent to the bank’s bottomline.
The bank’s audited net income reached P5.53 billion for the year, or 46-percent higher than the previous P3.8 billion.
For the European market, there were already eight local banks with presence in London, according to the BSP website.
However, only two have full-service branches: Allied Commercial Bank UK Plc (public limited company) and sister-firm PNB.
Montinola said they expect a 15-percent increase in remittances would be coursed through this formal channel of banks.
The difficulty with all of these projections is not really within our control. People who go abroad would have to decide if they send money to the Philippines or not, he added.
Montinola said hes banking on BPIs superior system to get a larger proportion of what they [overseas Filipinos] send.
While Montinola aired his fears that Filipino deployment could slow down in the next few years due to the Philippiness booming call center industry, he said BPI still believes this could be still far.
Over the years, redeployment and migration are seen to be a preferred option for Filipino workers and professionals as long as the domestic economy can not provide meaningful employment, the bank said in its annual report. OFW Journalism Consortium
Pinoy Life Abroad
