CitySavings on Financial Inclusion in the Digital World
RETURN ON INVESTMENT 2017: CitySavings Chairman of the Board Eugene Acevedo (2nd from right) during the awarding and giving of Certificate of Appreciation on his talk about Financial Inclusion in the Digital World together with UP JFA CEO Lowell Tiu, (2nd from left) and other UP JFA officers at the University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City last November 11.
City Savings Bank (CitySavings) was acknowledged by the University of the Philippines Junior Finance Association (UP JFA) as one of its official partners last November 11 during the Return on Investment (ROI) Summit held at the National Institute of Physics in UP Diliman, Quezon City.
Over two hundred senior high school students participated in the summit which aims to foster educational advancement in the field of digitized financial inclusion through proactive education. UP JFA CEO Lowell Tiu welcomed the students and emphasized that “this summit is driven to prepare high school students both inside and outside Metro Manila and give them the competitive advantage that will expand their knowledge on investing, entrepreneurship and career planning for the future.”
During his talk, CitySavings Chairman of the Board Eugene Acevedo shared how the Philippine economic growth outplayed other Asian countries. “Our country is doing well economically, growing over 6%, a GDP rate faster than that of our ASEAN neighbors. The country’s progressive regulatory framework is high supportive and the regulators have been consistently complimented as being one of the best globally”, he further expounded.
However, he emphasized that despite the economic progress and support from regulatory offices, the mass market remains underserved due to a vast number of Filipinos who do not participate in the banking system.
“Half of this market takes loans but three – quarters of those who borrow get it from informal sources, the 5 – 6 lenders; that means around 21 million Filipino adults are not being served by the banking institutions”, he said.
On the other hand, Acevedo mentioned that mass market borrowers, ideally, would like swift processing of transactions, with a high probability of approval. To face this challenge, CitySavings started to transform digitally.
“The brain of our (CitySavings) factory is the Loans Hub Plus – a credit algorithm that crunches and instantaneously replies whether the loan of an applicant is approved or disapproved. The synergy between digitization and data science has allowed us to drop expenses drastically, and even delight our customers”, he further explained.
Furthermore, the technology journey has enabled the bank to set up offsite loan origination through marketing officers who bring computer tablets with them to cater to loan transactions outside the branch, and release proceeds in just minutes.
“Because of the advancement of technology, we were able to satisfy the customer’s requirements quickly and hassle free”, he added.