BPI Family to double business in 5 years

MANILA, Philippines - BPI Family Savings Bank, a unit of Ayala-led Bank of the Philippine Islands, said it intends to double its business over the next five years to cement its dominance in the country’s thrift banking industry.

Maria Cristina Go, president of BPI Family Savings Bank, said the country’s largest thrift bank is looking at doubling its asset base through higher loans and deposits over the next five years.

“Again we hope to replicate our growth performance the past five years. We are doubling again in the next five years,” Go said in a press conference.

According to her, the bank is targeting an asset base of P540 billion over the next five years from last year’s P270 billion.

The growth, she explained, would be fueled by the doubling of its loan book to more than P400 billion from P207 billion and its deposit base to P480 billion from P240 billion.

“So we hope to double our business in five years,” she said.

For this year alone, the bank is expecting a slower growth in its loan book to P210 billion after recording a 15 percent expansion to P207 billion last year. This year’s projected growth is lower than the industry average of between 10 and 15 percent.

“We expect modest growth for this year simply because this year we are streamlining processes and making sure that our credit parameters will allow us to grow more aggressively into the future,” Go said.

The expected slower growth is also due to the review of its loan processing in line with the mandate of the Credit Information Corp. (CIC).

“We’ve grown tremendously in the past five years. We have doubled our business in the last five years prior to 2017 and therefore the focus this year is to build capacity because our processes are no longer designed for the kind of volumes that we have,” she said.

As a result, the bank sees its profit growth slowing down to 10 percent this year after expanding 20 percent to P4.4 billion last year.

“We are more prudent at this time. We are reviewing our credit models because we have aggressively grown in the past. We have to make sure that we manage the risks,” she said.

Go said lending has its own risk and BPI Family Savings Bank has to make sure its credit losses are well within boundaries through a lot of process improvements, streamlining, and the review of its credit models.

The bank is looking at opening six more branches this year located outside Metro Manila and another six branches next year to beef up its footprint of 156 branches nationwide.

She said the bank continues to focus on its vital role in partnering with Filipino families to achieve their life goals and contributing to the national agenda of inclusive growth as only two our of 10 households have savings account.