BANGKO Sentral ng Pilipinas urged banks and other financial institutions to put up more branches nationwide so that financial services will be felt by the large number of unbanked Filipino households.
The result of the 2014 Consumer Finance Survey released by Bangko Sentral on Friday showed 86 percent of Filipino households did not have a deposit account, while only 14 percent saved their money in banks.
The foremost reason cited by the respondents for not opening a deposit account was not having enough money to keep an account. They also cited the far location of a bank, high service charges, a high minimum balance and lack of trust on banks.
“Bank branching must be encouraged so that their services will be felt by the majority of population,” Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor Diwa Guinigundo said in a briefing.
“Banking services must be more accessible to everyone, a very important thing, for us to have a more inclusive economic growth. We need to strengthen efforts toward greater financial inclusion. We have already started this and we need to sustain this,” Guinigundo said.
Monetary Board member Felipe Medalla said aside from bank branching, banks must also be allowed to have cash agents, and people must “trust these cash agents.”
The survey also showed that majority of household heads employed in private establishments and government were banked. In contrast, majority of household heads who are self-employed, worked for private household, other household’s farm, and in other informal occupations are unbanked.
Banks were the most popular type of depository institution. These included commercial banks (50.2 percent), rural/cooperative banks (13.8 percent), savings/thrift banks (10.1 percent), and microfinance banks (9 percent).
The banking system held 83.1 percent of deposit accounts of households. Other depository institutions of households were multi-purpose/credit cooperative (11.4 percent), paluwagan (4.1 percent), and savings and loan association (3.6 percent).