CitySavings’ 2018 Sales Rally: ‘Reinventing Our Future’

CitySavings’ 2018 Sales Rally: ‘Reinventing Our Future’


REINVENTING OUR FUTURE: CitySavings President and CEO Catalino Abacan officially welcomes the attendees with optimism as he highlights the performance of the bank last year and its strategic direction for 2018.

Over 200 City Savings Bankers witnessed a refreshed and revamped edition of the Sales Rally held last February 4, 2018 at Radisson Blu Hotel, Cebu City.

In line with its theme, “Reinventing Our Future”, this year’s rally convened all sales and operations heads as well as the bank’s group heads and management team nationwide. While in the past the Sales Rally focused on management heads’ discussion of their key initiatives and action plans, this year’s annual gathering introduced a different experience where high caliber speakers from the industry were invited to talk about their significant field of expertise.

The event started with the opening remarks from CitySavings President and CEO Catalino Abacan who welcomed the attendees and discussed the bank’s performance last year, as well as the strategic directions of CitySavings for this year. Despite the significant challenge particularly on the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) renewal which seemingly affected the bank’s loan portfolio, Abacan remains optimistic that the goals this 2018 are within reach.

Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) SVP - Data Science and Analytics Head Marita Bueno started her discussion on the Power of Data using Data Science and Analytics. Citing CitySavings as an example, she tackled the significance of data and how it substantially contributes to businesses where making the right decisions is vital and important to day to day operations. Bueno also expounded that by using Data Science, an automated tool that uses the combination of analytics, computer science and statistics, any huge amount of data can be processed instantly and transformed into useful knowledge and insights which can be used for strategic planning.

CitySavings EVP - Chief Marketing Officer Levi Villanueva presented several advantages of the Bancassurance product which will be soon offered by CitySavings to its clients. He elaborated that this would be an opportunity for the bank to acquire new skills, generate another revenue source and help more teachers become financially stable.

Global Learning Solutions CEO and best – selling author, Roger Collantes was the main guest speaker. He is known for his motivational book, Beyond Survival: How to Thrive Amidst Life’s Inevitable Crisis. Collantes set the right atmosphere in the room as he shared his experience on how to develop agility, tenacity and resilience in times of crisis. He highlighted life skills and techniques to understand and master the attitude, habits and behavior that most successful people demonstrate in times of crisis and how they triumphed against seemingly insurmountable odds. He stressed that whether personal or organization related, a crisis is a fact of life hence, the key to thrive on it is to embrace it with a positive mindset and to stay focused, calm and alive. Collantes ended the session with various commitment exercises that would help the participants reinvent themselves and create the best future they desired.

CitySavings Chairman of the Board Eugene Acevedo in his closing remarks highlighted the success stories of the bank for the last five decades, and how the bank has been uplifting lives of thousands of public school teachers. The challenge for the bank moving forward is how to serve the remaining 99% of the underserved sector by providing new opportunities for financial inclusion.

The annual Sales Rally is a joint effort of Reputation Management together with Sales and Marketing and other corporate support units.

Nuggets of wisdom from CitySavings’ team leaders and guest speakers

“Today, we start building the future of CitySavings, start building the leading mass market and microfinance bank in the Philippines.”
Eugene Acevedo
Chairman of the Board, CitySavings

“We should be ready to lend a hand in fast tracking our plans of conquering new opportunities and remain relevant where we are guided by a simple and strategic road map dubbed as ‘SECS’ which stands for Sell, Explore, Collect and Sustain.”
Catalino Abacan
President and CEO, CitySavings

“For the longest time, we have always been accused of having a particular skill which is to sell salary loan to public school teachers. I believe this is our time to prove that we can do more than what we have now as we continuously grow our business.”
Levi Villanueva
EVP - Chief Marketing Officer, CitySavings

“Data is the new oil, the most valuable resource. We get knowledge and insights from data and we can use them in making decisions.”
Marita Bueno
SVP - Data Science and Analytics Head, UnionBank

“Survivors are those people who just settle for a passing rate while ‘thrivers’ are those who don’t get scared of challenges because they know that they have something to unleash within themselves.”
Roger Collantes
CEO, Global Learning Solutions (GLS)