The year-on-year (YoY) growth in recurring income was attributable to the following: 1) Net interest margin improved by 6bps to 4.6% brought about by higher yields in earning assets, coupled by lower cost of funds from the expansion of our CASA deposits; and 2) Fee-based income came from the growth of InstaPay charges and interchange fees. Higher foreign exchange income (up 53% YoY to Php369.5 million) also boosted our topline revenues.
The free one-year accident coverage is part of Pru Life UK’s efforts in helping Filipinos get the most out of life by making it easily available via Pulse, the insurer’s holistic health and wealth management solution for consumers.
“Protecting Filipinos and their families is one of Pru Life UK’s strongest advocacies. We launched the Free Personal Accident coverage through Pulse to show the public that having life protection doesn’t have to be complicated,” Pru Life UK President and Chief Executive Officer Eng Teng Wong shared.
Receiving a handful of coins and bills as change can be pretty inconvenient, especially if you need to carry them around as you go about your day. Sure, you can stuff them neatly in your wallet or coin purse, but as they pile up, there should be another solution to hold your endless barya.
And who hasn't encountered the perennial "meron po ba kayong exact amount" question when paying at the cashier?
The good news now is there is e-sukli! Digital financial services leader PayMaya and the Philippines' largest department store, The SM Store, launched this innovative solution to make receiving change more convenient for shoppers. e-sukli allows customers to receive a change of up to P50 directly to their PayMaya accounts instead of taking bulky coins and bills from the cashier.
Now available in over 60 The SM Store branches nationwide, E-sukli makes receiving change much easier and eliminates the need to find a smaller bill for your purchases. It is also a great way to accumulate funds in your PayMaya account so you can use it when paying cashless the next time you go shopping, dine at your favorite restaurant, or pay bills.
Through this first-of-its-kind partnership, SeekCap, the digital lending marketplace venture of UBX, will be able to extend sustainable agri financing to Oh Crop! Adlai rice farmers to expand their operations and gain higher yields.
Founded and led by chief executive officer Rose Tolentino, chief operating officer Chair Trinidad-Mendoza, and co-owner celebrity chef Marvin Agustin, Oh Crop! assists rice farmers – from choosing the right seeds to plant to selling them to a wider marketplace – in shifting to farming Adlai.
A major commercial and industrial center in the province of Rizal, Cainta’s major thoroughfares link it to the rest of Metro Manila. Its continually evolving infrastructure and strategic location in the Calabarzon Region have made it an ideal location to work, live, and play.
“Cainta is proving to be a popular place to invest in real estate, thanks in large part to its proximity to Metro Manila and the continued rise of commercial establishments and transport hubs. We, at RLC Residences through Sierra Valley Gardens, want to provide the convenience of being in the city while enjoying the quiet of suburban living,” said RLC Residences Marketing Head Karen Cesario.
UnionBank has always been at the forefront of technological innovations to empower consumers and make them future ready. It was the first Philippine bank to introduce the following that have been game-changers in the way we do banking: (1) mobile banking through wireless application protocol-enabled cellphones; (2) launch a banking website; (3) use an online payment card through EON; (4) use a chat bot (“Talk to Rafa”); (5) launch its own stablecoin (PHX); (6) introduce mobile check deposit through its award-winning app UnionBank Online; (7) opened the first fully digital bank branch in the country, The ARK; and, most recently (8) the first Philippine bank to go fully on the cloud.
The Bank through its MSME platform GlobalLinker (UBGL), together with AEV, will be offering technology-focused training courses to MSMEs who are with the Tourism Promotions Board (TBP) Membership Program. The said courses are designed to provide learning opportunities that will enable capacity-building and address various gaps in digital competencies for the tourism MSMEs.
“The country’s tourism sector was one of the hardest hit during this pandemic, which is why we want to offer additional training to help MSME owners in the sector, hone their digital entrepreneurship skills,” said Jaypee Soliman, UnionBank VP and SME & Micropreneurs Segment Head. “With this, not only will it become easier for them to acclimate to the growing digital economy, it will also help revitalize the tourism sector in general, and somehow the country’s economy.”
During the Promoting Women and Financial Inclusion Today webinar hosted by the European Chamber of Commerce Philippines, government leaders from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and the Senate, as well as executives of leading open finance platform UBX, and insurance provider Pru Life UK underscored the huge benefits in including women entrepreneurs into the country’s financial systems.
Global studies conducted by the International Finance Corp. (IFC) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that male-led businesses have more access to business financing than their female counterparts.
NFT expert Migui Planas, a member of UnionBank's Digital Asset Markets Unit (DAMU), was the main speaker, sharing valuable bits of knowledge in NFT and his experiences as an NFT art enthusiast. During the panel discussion, he was joined by colleagues Jonathan Roque, Product Manager at the Bank’s Blockchain Center of Excellence (BCOE); Miguel Elbinias, Liquidity Trader at DAMU; and Cathy Casas, Head of Blockchain and API Business Group.
The conversation revolved around topics relevant to NFT artists -- the impact of NFT on the ownership and sale of digital art, how to mint a piece of artwork as an NFT, how to determine the value of their art, and the marketplaces where they can sell their art.
On day 2 of the webinar, the discussion focused on learnings shared by NFT art buyers and collectors -- how they can resell the NFT artwork that they own, how they can ensure a smooth transfer of ownership during purchase, and the various marketplaces where collectors can purchase NFT art.
Artists Jose Antonio Reyes and Ian Victoriano, among those who joined the well-attended webinars, expressed appreciation to the organizers for helping them gain a better understanding of NFTs and blockchain in general, and more importantly, for enabling them to better protect their ownership of their art while expanding their horizons when it comes to sharing them.
"It was very helpful for me as an artist. Learning about an avenue where I can focus on myself as an artist, while being exposed to a global market and seamless royalties is very meaningful. It's the future, and I'm grateful we're being taught how to adapt," Reyes said.
“The talks helped simplify NFT concepts for me. Made me want to explore the possibility of using NFTs to help advance artists’ rights,” Victoriano said.
While still considered highly volatile, the NFT art market has proven to be a very lucrative space, with some artworks selling for thousands and even millions of dollars. In the Hiscox Online Art Trade Report which was released in October last year, it was revealed that NFT art sales in 2021 for the said month reached $3.5 billion in value.
NFTs have forever changed the game for artists and collectors, and many now see them as a staple in digital art moving forward. Being the first Bank in the country to fully embrace NFTs, UnionBank believes that there are more potential use cases for them that are yet to be discovered, which is why the Bank sees the value of knowledge sharing to assist more Filipinos understand the said technology better.
"We're really happy to do this as this reinforces the Bank's 'Tech-Up Pilipinas' advocacy," said Casas. "We, at the Blockchain Center of Excellence, want to share our knowledge of blockchain technology, as the team is very much open to imparting what we know and also open to improving that learning by involving other industries in this discussion."
The webinar is just one of the initiatives of partners UnionBank and CANVAS.PH, to support artists and collectors navigate the emerging NFT art space, while boosting CANVAS.PH’s advocacy of promoting children's literacy, exploring national identity, and deepening public appreciation for Philippine art, culture, and the environment.
The rate at which blockchain is being adopted around the world may not be massive, according to Cathy, we aren't quite there yet in terms of the grassroots and worldwide level of adoption, but it’s still moving faster than predicted, as a result of numerous catalysts these last two years.
“You're seeing people shift careers and industries from wherever to blockchain, and we've seen how demand and interest not just increased, but have increased several fold especially during the past two years. At some point, we feel that merchants and payment service providers will also need to catch up soon, in response to this growing consumer demand,” Casas said.
“Of course, you also have the likes of payment aggregators, such as PayPal, that serve as connectors to bridge this demand-and-supply gap until probably the volatility becomes acceptable to them, or until stable coins exist in every currency. So, if we were to put it in terms of years, I'm seeing a three to five-year horizon for this, from my initial view of around eight to ten years.”
Cathy also touched on blockchain as a value-settlement component of the internet. She believes this will begin to evolve into something that will pave the way for more use cases over the next decade.
"Since I started working on blockchain three years ago, and probably because I'm in the banking industry, I have had this attachment to the idea of blockchain acting as a value-settlement layer on top of the internet," Casas shared during the panel discussion.
"And I see this evolving fast," she added. "I've been reading about the metaverse a lot lately and my take really on it is that people are looking for something different, something that they can have more control of, something that they can create, something safer. And now that the tools for this are actually becoming more available to everyone, so, technology now is something that they can control instead of what used to be—you know, technology controlling us. And it has been like that in recent years."
Casas pointed out how human behavior has been modified by the existence of smartphones and their applications, as well as social media sites. People have become more vulnerable to the dangers associated with the centralization of data, including cybersecurity concerns such as data theft. The good thing is that people are also slowly realizing this, seeing the value of having some form of decentralization to prevent becoming victims to these dangers.
"In five to ten years, this value-settlement layer will begin to evolve into something more concrete, something more user-friendly, more interoperable. We'll have more types of assets and already set a framework for it, and probably more ESG [environmental, social, and governance] compliance -- as more people think about doing and creating technology for good, and with more traditional institutions probably adapting to and already interacting with it," Casas concludes.
As we celebrate International Women’s Month this March, a big part of the commemoration is encouraging the empowerment of women everywhere. And as women continue to recognize their worth, a key part of the power that they hold is their ability to bring up the rest of the world—especially vulnerable sectors like women and children—along with them.
Empowered women now have another easy way to help those around them with EastWest’s Dolce Vita Titanium Mastercard. The Dolce Vita Titanium Mastercard allows cardholders to earn Dolce Vita Charms through the purchases they make using the card and use these Charms to make donations to key charitable organizations such as CARITAS Manila, CRIBS, and WORLD Vision. These organizations have their respective efforts to help out underprivileged communities across the country.
This master-planned development in Quezon City might just be the right fit for you
Now that working remotely is as accessible as ever, many of us are moving outside the city to leave behind the concrete jungle in exchange for fresh air and proximity to nature. A recent Santos Knight Frank survey corroborates this pandemic-driven shift, with 33% of respondents now preferring to live in the suburbs, in search of low-density environments and wellness-related features.
