Building the base for the next 150 years

Bank of the Philippine Islands, proud to be celebrating its 150th anniversary, invests hundreds of millions of pesos every year in information technology. Since 1986, the task of running the bank’s IT policies, systems and directions, including managing the required budget, has fallen on senior vice-president and chief information officer Ramon Sales who, in his own words, is "probably the oldest person in IT now."

In the last 15 years, Sales has overseen BPI’s progress toward becoming the ultimate express bank through pioneering services such as automated teller machines (ATMs), point-of-sale (POS) payment systems, phone banking and Internet trading. His first task in the mid-1980s was to stabilize the newly installed automated systems. "We had to make sure we’d be able to give reliable service. The system had to be online regularly and consistently," he said.

In 1989, BPI replaced its ATM system with STRATUS, a fault-tolerant system running ON2, ATM and POS applications. The early 1990s saw deposits, consumer loans, foreign exchange, money market and trade being converted into industrial-strength application packages. The acquisition of two big banks, CityTrust Banking Corp. and Far East Bank and Trust Co., and converting their systems into BPI’s, as well as preparations for Y2K took up most of the IT budget from the mid-1990s to year 2000.

Constant upgrading

This month, BPI is set to activate its new STRATUS box that will upgrade its current ATM network capacity of 1,000 ATMS to as much as 3,5000 ATMs in the future. All this time, Sales been busy making sure the BPI network keeps ahead of the demands of the banking business in terms of capacity and capability.

Sales said all the components of a bank’s network architecture have to be constantly upgraded to suit customer requirements. The delivery systems of channels through which BPI services are accessed by customers, the enterprise application integrator or connectivity layer, and the core applications within the bank need to be seamlessly integrated to give the kind of service BPI clients expect.

"Banking, to a large extent, is more information-dependent than other industries. The capacity to process huge volumes of transactions is critical for the business continuity of a bank. Bottlenecking of this processing capacity always constrains the growth of a bank. In order to grow, a bank needs not only capital but also the mastery of growing its IT infrastructure to relieve constraints in processing capacity through judicious application of necessary IT investments," Sales said.

"If the bank were a ship, the IT infrastructure would be the engine room," he added.

Strategic viewpoint

But more than managing the bank’s capacity for processing even more voluminous information like deposits and loans, Sales has seen his role as CIO in the last six years from beyond this operational viewpoint.

"More and more, IT is becoming strategic in determining what is possible for a bank. In this light, my next role is to influence the principals of the bank and to help them come up with correct investment strategies so as to take advantage of the opportunities available due to developments in IT," he explained.

Because of this new strategic viewpoint, Sales believes a CIO must learn how to help transform the entire organization to become relevant to the requirements of the New Economy.

Early on, the strategic direction set for BPI has been to install a complete delivery system that will assure wide connectivity, accessibility and total convenience for its customers. It favors building long-lasting relationships with loyal customers who value the varied services available from the bank.

Today, bank clients who purchase and sell securities online through BPI Trade can place an order and receive confirmation of a done trade through his mobile phone, should he need to shut down his computer for any reason. He can even program a portfolio monitor to inform him via mobile phone should his price thresholds be reached while he is not actively viewing the market.

Sales said BPI’s direction for the New Economy is to provide banking services anywhere and anytime. Eventually, when security considerations are resolved, BPI should be able to proceed in this direction, he said.

And that will definitely come well before BPI celebrates its next 150th year.