MANILA, Philippines - Rizal Microbank and the Asian Bankers Association (ABA) recently conducted a two-day course on microfinance as a business initiative for delegates of ABA-member banks from Indonesia, Iran, Taiwan and Vietnam.
Rizal Microbank is the microfinance arm of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), one of the largest banks in the Philippines, and a member of the Yuchengco Group of Companies.
The microfinance appreciation course aims to impart the best microfinance practices and experiences to ABA member banks through several lectures and field exposure visits to Rizal Microbank’s clients.
In his discussions with the ABA delegates, RCBC president and chief executive officer and ABA chairman Lorenzo V. Tan stressed the need to provide a safer and more reliable means of loaning money for self-employed entrepreneurs or micro-entrepreneurs given the Philippines’ pyramidal distribution of wealth and progressive economy.
Tan said there are a lot of behaviors in the Philippine banking environment that are unique to its culture and a lot of consumer companies take advantage of that.
“Our vision in RCBC is for small businessmen to start in a microfinance business. Then as they build their wealth, they move to our small-medium enterprise (SME), and then over time they move on to the corporate bank. So as you can see, there is a whole progression,†said Tan.
A lecture workshop was held during the first day of the course wherein Rizal Microbank’s president Lourdes S. Pineda discussed the basics of microfinance lending and the approaches used by lending institutions as well as their corresponding performance indicators.
The session was capped with a lecture focusing on RCBC’s microfinance experience as a universal bank.
“So far, our microfinance performance data has been impressive. As of 2012, we have a total number of close to a thousand active borrowers. We’re eyeing to expand our geographical reach in the future as of now, we have branches and microfinance banking offices in Southern Luzon and Mindanao,†Pineda added.
The two-day course concluded with a field exposure visit to Rizal Microbank clients with various businesses, loan sizes and loan tenors in Tanauan City, Batangas.