I used to have an EON account with Unionbank and for some time, it served me well. But when it became inactive as my transactions declined, I decided to close it. Still, I continued to hear only good stuff from other friends who were either UnionBank employees or customers.
UnionBank’s vision to transform into a digital, customer-focused bank is evident. In May, it was named ‘second most helpful bank in Asia-Pacific’ in the BankQuality Consumer Survey on Retail Banks conducted in April. When the pandemic hit and it was difficult to get to my usual banks, I began to see how Unionbank’s foresight to bring banking online was truly a blessing not just for them but for all of us.
I was invited recently to listen in to UnionBank President and CEO Edwin Bautista’s E-talk with media. I said yes. It isn’t every day that you get to listen to the head of a bank that is making waves during a pandemic for being able to provide essential banking services, 24/7, without its customers having to set foot in a branch.
According to Edwin Bautista, on Day 1 of ECQ in Metro Manila, 80-90% of UnionBank’s headquarters workforce on Work From Home (WFH) were already performing ALL critical functions. Branches were open with full banking services, ATMs were ready, and the bank launched “Bank on Wheels”, a mobile ATM service, offering balance inquiries, withdrawals, bills payments, funds transfer, and even account opening, all without leaving their communities.
The bank also enhanced the financial services of its app to allow its customers to bank from home: digital account opening, online check deposit, sending money to money remittance centers, removal of fees on fund transfers, and cash in and out via ECPay partners.
In fact, Bautista said that they saw a 20-fold increase in digital account openings at their bank month-on-month. From an average of about 3,472 digital account openings in September 2019, this surged to 69,186 openings in September 2020.
UnionBank also provided its services in other ways during the pandemic:
- UnionBank helped the government in the disbursement of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD)’s Social Amelioration Program (SAP) cash assistance to 700,000 beneficiaries amounting to PhP 4.9 billion. It also assisted partner Local Government Units (LGUs) in the distribution of cash or loan proceeds to constituents.
- UnionBank has also helped countless micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) digitize amid the pandemic through its MSME platform GlobalLinker. MSME-leaning platforms offered by its fintech spinoff, UBX, have also been of great assistance: Sentro (a free online shop builder with payment gateway) now has more than 27,000 online shops using the platform; SeekCap (an online lending marketplace built for SMEs) now has more than 16,000 MSME signups; and Bux (a secure online payment platform for sellers) has over 92,000 users. GlobalLinker’s user base is also now at more than 38,000.
- At the height of the pandemic, UnionBank was able to assist another sector of society – teachers – with the help of its thrift bank subsidiary, CitySavings Bank. To date, CitySavings has extended a total of PhP 26.1 billion in teachers’ loans, PhP 3.2 billion in motorcycle loans, and PhP 2.9 billion in MSME loans to beneficiaries.
Today, UnionBank is looking beyond just the resiliency that it has exhibited so far to a renaissance in innovation and co-creation. Bautista described the evolution of their development process. From the traditional ‘waterfall’ development with 1-2 releases per month, they were able to move to an agile methodology where they were able to have about 20 releases per month that allowed it to react quickly to any situation and achieve innovation at a much faster rate than much larger banks with legacy systems. Now, UnionBank says they are moving into DevSecOps (short for “development, security, and operations”) methodology that could allow about 120 releases per month.
DevSecOps is an ideology that aims to integrate security into every stage of the development-deployment cycle. With this new methodology, the Bank has been able to test new features that they develop much faster and deploy the said features on an almost real-time basis. Moving forward, DevSecOps will play a key role in the creation of new services for the Bank.
Bautista also mentioned that a key element of their digital renaissance is data science and artificial intelligence (AI) and mentioned that they have two people with extensive experience in these two areas. He says this will be implemented across various verticals within the bank, from mobile banking to credit, from algorithms to operational enhancements, among others.
I’m excited to see how UnionBank will evolve during this renaissance phase. I am also actually entertaining thoughts of opening an account again with them now that I prefer banking from home.