SEC issues license to Sumisho Motor Finance

MANILA, Philippines - The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has granted a corporate license to Sumisho Motor Finance Corp., a P4-billion joint venture between Philippine Savings Bank and Japanese trading giant Sumitomo Corp.

Out of the total P4 billion authorized capital stock of Sumisho, P1 billion has been subscribed and paid for.

Sumisho, the first motorcycle financing company in the Philippines, is aiming to capture a 15 percent share of the P40 billion motorcycle market in the country.

The country’s motorcycle industry churns in over 700,000 units annually and is seen to grow to 1.5 million units by 2014.

Given a booming market, the amount of motorcycle financing is expected to increase to P5 billion. Typical loan size varies from P50,000 to P80,000 payable from one to three years.

Sumisho will start operations in the first quarter of next year with an initial network of three to five branches located in Metro Manila and increase this further to 30 by 2014, said Hidetoshi Fukui, president and chief executive officer of Sumisho. Sumisho will finance only Japanese-made motorcycles in the dominant 120 cc models.

Sumitomo, one of the world’s leading traders and distributors of commodities, has been running motorcycle-finance businesses in Indonesia and Thailand.

With the success of Sumitomo’s motorcycle-financing businesses in other parts of Asia, and PSBank’s widespread experience in the consumer-financing market, the group is confident Sumisho would meet similar success while providing affordable means of transportation to the public.