East West Bank opens 43rd branch

East West Bank (EWB) made operational its 43rd personalized banking center (PBC) in Zamboanga City. It is one of the eight PBCs opened by the bank in different parts of the country. The other locations are Cabanatuan, Dagupan, Baguio, Cagayan de Oro, Calamba, Lucena and Westgate Corporate City in Alabang.

To date, the Bank has a total network of 47 centers. EWBC vice chairman and chief executive officer Jonathan Gotianun said that "we wanted to open branches particularly in provincial areas where we have no physical presence to improve our market reach and provide opportunities to clients who stand to benefit from the bank’s innovative products and services."

The recent spate of branch openings is reflective of EWB’s good performance this year.

It’s resources climbed 18.5 percen tot P14.1 billion as of June 2002 from P11.9 billion for the same period last year.

"EWBC’s traditional deposits grew by 16 percent to P9.5 Billion from last year‘s P8.2 billion.

Our total loan portfolio also expanded to P8.2 billion from P6.2 billion, a 36-percent increase over last year’s performance," said Elrey T. Ramos, EWB president and chief operating officer of East West Bank.

Early this year, it embarked on an ambitious repositioning strategy to communicate EWB’s more progressive stance and refocus its resources towards building a strong client base within its selected market segment – the middle market.

Part of this new aggressive marketing approach is to develop innovative, customer-oriented financial services anchored on strong IT systems.

Recently, the EWB launched its access banking products designed to provide customers with different points of connectivity to enable them to access the bank and their accounts, or use it as a venue to deal with other similar bank customers.