Union Bank of the Philippines, the 10th largest lender in terms of assets, said Monday consolidated net income last year jumped 67 percent to an all-time high of P10.1 billion from P6 billion in 2015.
UnionBank, the lending arm of the Aboitiz Group, said in a disclosure to the stock exchange the 2016 earnings translated into a return on equity of 16.9 percent.
“We are very pleased with our collective results. All of our major business segments contributed significantly to the bottom-line,” UnionBank president and chief operating officer Edwin Bautista said in a statement.
“More importantly, we were able to scale up our recurring revenue base, while making substantial headway in our journey towards digital transformation,” Bautista said.
Total loans went up by 31 percent to P235.4 billion, resulting in total assets breaching the half-trillion mark, to close the year at P524.4 billion. Total deposits grew 21 percent to P376.5 billion, with low-cost current and savings account increasing by 18 percent.
The combined growth in customer loans and deposits resulted in recurring revenues increasing 21 percent to P19.2 billion. Net interest income expanded 22 percent to P14.8 billion, while fees grew 19 percent to P4.4 billion.
“Full-year performance was also enhanced by tax-exempt profits from securities sold in the second half of the year to support the bank’s loan growth strategy,” the bank said.
UnionBank signed a bancassurance partnership with Insular Life Assurance Co. Ltd. Subject to regulatory approvals, UnionBank and its wholly-owned subsidiary, City Savings Bank, will distribute and sell Insular Life insurance products.
Insular Life is the first and largest Filipino life insurance company and one of the most trusted, having been in operation for 106 years.
“At the end of each day, we UnionBankers always ask ourselves whether we served our customers in a way that helped them elevate their lives and fulfill their dreams. Before this partnership with Insular Life, I was always hesitant to answer ‘yes’ convincingly, as I thought we missed an important and basic component – insurance,” Bautista said.
“I am therefore delighted that we are finally completing our product suite, and even more thrilled that we are signing with a company that has a long history of being our partner. We see this partnership enduring for decades,” he said.
Union Bank of the Philippines is a publicly-listed universal bank that distinguishes itself through superior technology, unique branch sales and service culture, and centralized backroom operations.
It is consistently recognized as one of Asia’s leading companies in banking and finance, ranking among the country’s top 10 universal banks in terms of key performance ratios in profitability, liquidity, solvency and efficiency.
The bank recently garnered the awards of Best Innovation in Retail Banking and Best Commercial Bank of the Year in the Philippines from the International Banker, one of the world’s leading publications of authoritative analysis on finance, international banking, and world affairs.
The bank was also voted as one of the Best Local Cash Management Banks in the Philippines in the 2016 polls conducted by Asiamoney for financial institutions.