RCBC not affected by Pacific Plans’ problems — BSP

Despite having the same stockholders, bank regulators said yesterday the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), the Yuchengco group’s flagship company, is not affected by the problems besetting Pacific Plans Inc. (PPI).

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said that PPI’s problems have not affected RCBC, one of the biggest commercial banks in the country.

RCBC president Francisco Magsajo denied reports that some of its branches are experiencing banks runs. Magsajo said the reports are baseless and untrue. "The information is baseless and done by people who have nothing better to do," Magsajo said.

As this developed, the BSP told depositors yesterday to make a distinction between a problematic rural bank and its name-sake that both use the name "Merchants Bank" in their signage.

BSP Deputy Governor Alberto V. Reyes told reporters yesterday that the Nueva Ecija-based Merchants Rural Bank of Talavera (MRBT) was completely unrelated to the thrift bank known as Merchants Savings and Loans Association (MSLAI) which also uses the name "Merchants Bank".

MRBT had declared on television earlier this week that it was having liquidity problems although bank management did not explain why or how bad.

According to Reyes, MRBT and MSLAI are different entities and completely unrelated to each other, with different stockholders and belonging to different classification of banks.

MRBT is a rural bank with eight branches while MSLAI is a thrift bank with has 21 branches nationwide, fully capitalized at P487 million. "MSLAI has not been experiencing liquidity problems," Reyes said.

According to Reyes, depositors might confuse MRBT with MSLAI which remained fully capitalized.

Reyes said the BSP has already met with MRBT officials who assured bank regulators that they were in talks with prospective investors interested in recapitalizing the rural bank.

On the other hand, Reyes said there was no cause for worry that PPI’s problem would eventually spill over into RCBC.

PPI had filed a petition for suspension of payments before a Makati court, saying that while it was still able to serve the maturing claims of its current plan holders, the company might not be able to sustain this in the future. "RCBC and PPI may have common stockholders but RCBC has no exposure in PPI so we do not expect any spill-over," Reyes said.

Meanwhile, PPI will be open today and tomorrow, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., to release the checks of beneficiaries of the current enrollment period. PPI is also requesting planholders who want to know how much tuition support they could get by texting their name and plan number to the following mobile phone nos.: 09279379437; 09279379438; 09279379320; and 09279379301.