Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., one of the country’s largest universal banks, said Tuesday it expects its remittance business to grow 20 percent in 2016, on the back of robust transactions from four major sources.
Manny Narciso, first senior vice president and head of RCBC’s global transaction banking group, said in a news briefing in Makati the bank would take advantage of its strong tie-ups with remittance partners overseas.
“We are confident of our remittance business… We are targeting a 20-percent growth [in remittance volume] in 2016. We hope to do more next year,” Narciso said.
The bank’s remittance transactions reached $2.5 billion in the first nine months, up by 18 percent from the same period last year. “We are going to exceed that because of strong growth in four countries,” he said.
Data showed of the $2.5 billion which RCBC handled in the nine-month period, remittances from Japan jumped 1,503 percent; Hong Kong, 112 percent; the United Kingdom, 102 percent; and Taiwan, 53 percent.
Narciso said RCBC made the right decision in the past to team up with the right companies. He said this month, RCBC was set to tie up with the US-based Xoom Corp., a leading digital money transfer or remittance provider.
Narciso said RCBC would leverage on its partnership with Cathay Life Insurance Co. Ltd. of Taiwan, which was forged in December last year to ensure that money sent home from overseas Filipinos in Taiwan would continue to be robust in the coming months.
“We are taking advantage of that partnership,” Narciso said. RCBC sealed a P17.92-billion deal with Cathay Life in December 2014 that allowed the latter to acquire a 20-percent stake in the bank.
Narciso said remittances’ volume was expected to grow by around 38 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter, as Filipinos usually send more money to their relatives at home during the Christmas season.
“We want to grow steadily and increase our market share every year. But to do that, we must work harder. We also want to partner with pawnshops to widen our distribution nationwide,” Narciso said.
BDO Unibank Inc. holds the top spot when it comes to remittance business among banks. It is followed by Bank of the Philippine Islands, the Philippine National Bank and RCBC.
RCBC has 2,828 remittance partners worldwide.
RCBC posted a net income of P3.64 billion in the first nine months, up 21 percent from P3.01 billion a year ago.
This translated into an annualized return on equity of 9 percent from 8.56 percent a year ago, while return on assets was also better at 1.1 percent compared to 0.95 percent as of end-September 2014.
Net income grew 11 percent in the third quarter to P1.11 billion from P995 million a year earlier.