RCBC the best PH bank by network uptime, and UBP ranks at the bottom

Brankas, a Singapore-based fintech software and services provider, published its first annual ASEAN Bank Stability Report [link] to measure the network uptime performance of ASEAN-region banks, and RCBC [RCB 23.45, up 2.0%] finished in the top spot among banks in the Philippines with an uptime of 98.3% (31 hours total downtime) including a stretch of seven months with zero downtime events. RCB’s longest downtime was 8 hours in length.

According to the report, Union Bank [UBP 44.70, up 1.6%] was the worst-performing Philippine bank with an uptime of just 95.98% (183 hours total downtime), including one outage that lasted for approximately 20 hours. Brankas noted: “Payday periods around the middle and end of the month coincided with more downtimes in the Philippines, indicating infrastructure strain.”

MB bottom-line: The BSP’s goal for the end of 2023 was to have “digitized” at least 50% of all retail transactions and to have raised the number of “banked” Filipino adults to 70%, so reports like this one are needed to assess the “quality of life” of users that have been pushed into this system. This first iteration of the Brankas ASEAN report seems to only cover the Philippines and Indonesia (hoping to see more countries next year), but it shows that our banks have a lot of room for improvement. Indonesia’s top performer (Bank Mandiri) had 99.59% uptime, with that bank’s longest downtime coming in at just 2 hours. Second place (Permata Bank) posted a 99.20% uptime. In the world of networking, there’s a huge difference between PH#1 (98.30%) and ID#1 (99.59%). In a digital-first economy, these metrics are only going to get more important going forward. Nothing angers me more than getting a “Please Try Again Later” type of message when I need to do something with my money. 

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