BDO to expand remittance network abroad

MANILA, Philippines - BDO Unibank Inc., the main banking arm of the Sy Group of Companies, is eyeing to grow its remittance network abroad to prepare for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Integration by 2015, a top bank official said.

In an open forum during the 2nd Asian Business Conference 2014, BDO president & CEO Nestor Tan said while they have been operating a number of remittance  centers globally, this is one avenue of growth they are looking at to prepare themselves for opportunities in an integrated Asean market.

“If ever we go overseas, what we have to have is a network of remittance (centers) worldwide which we already have, and we also have a branch in HongKong to support our overseas operations,” he said.

He said the bank continue to target overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and local companies doing international cross-border trade.

But Tan pointed out that the expansion would be came out “slowly.”

Tan said BDO would also like to focus growing the bank organically.

“(We want to focus on) local expansion. You have to have a strong local business before you can expand globally. Because for us, we don’t want to spread too thinly while our resources are not properly deployed, we still see the local market as growing. There are still underpenetrated (unbanked) areas so why go elsewhere when our local market is still strong and still offer a lot of potential for growth,” Tan said, in an earlier interview.

He cited of entest data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) which showed that, about 80 percent of the country’s population remain unbanked.

Tan noted that as much as BDO would want to compete sparingly with its counterparts once the ASEAN Community kicks in 2015, the bank is still relatively too small in terms of size. BDO ranked 19th among the ASEAN banks.

In the first quarter of 2014, BDO recorded a P5.5 billion net income, 46 percent lower year-on-year as last year’s figure included exceptional trading gains.

The bank’s total deposit base stood at over P1.3 trillion as of the first three months of the year.

BDO has set a guidance income P22.8 billion for 2014.