MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), the country’s leading digital challenger bank, was recognized for its massive digital transformation and socio-economic impact on rural and remote communities in the Philippines. The bank was chosen for having the ‘Best Digital Transformation Program’ by the Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards 2024; and selected for the ‘Economic Empowerment Award’ by the Asian Banking and Finance – ESG Business Awards 2024.
The Global Retail Banking Innovation Awards is committed to celebrate the region’s most cutting-edge financial service providers that are pioneering new standards and capabilities. Its judging panel included industry leaders from entities such as HSBC, Merge, FNZ Switzerland & Private Banking, Forrester, Accenture, Synpulse, PwC, and EY. The ESGBusiness Awards 2024 panel included leaders from KPMG Sustainability Consulting Co., Ltd., PwC, EY, Kearney Asia-Pacific, and Boston Consulting Group. Both prestigious awards highlight the global industry consensus around RCBC’s dedication and success in scaling sustainable finance through digital solutions that aim to transform far-flung communities into thriving spaces of economic growth.
RCBC centered upon its digital solutions – RCBC Pulz, RCBC ATM Go, and RCBC Diskartech. RCBC Pulz is a highly personalized digital banking application catering to emerging affluent and mass affluent Filipinos that makes a wide range of banking services such as credit card management, remittances, and foreign currency exchange accessible within a fingertips’ reach. RCBC ATM Go is the country’s pioneering and largest network of grassroots-oriented and bank-agnostic ATM Terminals with 100% nationwide coverage that provide economic opportunities for partner merchants in exchange for advocating sustainable digital finance. RCBC Diskartech is the world’s first ever multilingual financial inclusion application in Taglish (Tagalog-English) and Cebuano that has the easiest bank onboarding service and a wide range of basic banking services including remittances and loan applications.
Lito Villanueva, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovations and Inclusion Officer of RCBC, expressed his gratitude to the award giving bodies for acknowledging the bank’s meteoric rise in the global field of sustainable finance. He adds that the bank is committed to enhancing economic opportunities and digital banking access in the coming year emphasizing opportunities that reside in untapped markets.
“These accolades acknowledge the bank’s growing global role in making sustainable financial solutions accessible to all Filipinos that are socially transformative. We have improved lives and expanded incomes of micro, small and medium enterprises. We look towards 2025 as a year of endless opportunities to expand our scope to more communities that are yet to have accessible digital banking,” Villanueva added.
