Market Trends

Not known by many, it has been one of country’s "younger" property developers that has been raising the bar and setting pioneering trends in residential condominium designs and marketing.

The Manansala Towers at the exclusive Rockwell Center in Makati has been completed and turn-over of units are currently on-going. We have also been informed that the new Joya Towers and Lofts has been successfully marketed with only a handful of units up for grabs.

Desperate in trying to identify Rockwell’s successful trade secrets, some bigger players have reportedly started to emulate the moves of Tong Padilla and his strategic team Rockwell Land.

At least two companies, one an established developer and the other an upstart, have since come up with their own projects offering loft type units. In fact, one of them, noticing how large the demand for loft type residential units is, has even started to market an all-loft condominium building.

As a further complement to Tong Padilla, the marketing teams of two big players have as well adopted the same moves of Rockwell Land in marketing their residential products to Fil-Ams all over the US.

A major player has likewise replicated Rockwell’s strategy appropriating expensive retail space in their malls to accommodate model units of selected projects. Another move initiated by Rockwell Land in the Power Plant Mall more than a year ago.

Highway robbery

With the huge amounts of money being siphoned off our hapless and mostly middle to lower-middle income countrymen, credit card companies should consider it their responsibility to their card holders not to charge exhorbitant interest rates and to adopt measures that would protect them fraud.

Otherwise, credit card companies are no different from usurers, or the "5-6" money lenders.

Catanduanes Rep. Joseph Santiago has noted that existing safeguards against credit card theft are weak and inadequate.

He says gangsters now use electronic gadgets to illicitly download data contained in the magnetic strips of a card when it is swiped to pay for a purchase. Syndicates then upload the stolen information to a fabricated card that is used to make illegal purchases without the cardholder’s knowledge.

In the United States, Santiago pointed out that to guard against theft, card numbers are no longer indicated in the charge slips or receipts, except for the last four digits.

A simpler added precaution being adopted by merchants in the US is requesting a valid ID each time a cardholder makes a transaction, particularly a large purchase. Unfortunately, these so-called first lines of defense which will go a long way in putting fraud in check are not being done here, Santiago said.

To think that Filipinos charged P150 billion worth of purchases to their credit cards last year. The number of card-using Filipinos is expected to grow to 10 million in the years ahead, according to an industry survey.

Last week, a US-based processing firm stunned consumers around the world when it reported the biggest data breach ever involving credit cardholders.

CardSystems Solutions Inc. said the private information on 40 million Visa, Mastercard, American Express and Discovery cardholders had been stolen, thus exposing them to the risk of illegal transactions.

Credit card theft is now the largest white-collar crime and leading consumer complaint in many parts of the globe.

But credit card companies themselves are milking card holders dry with all those fees and excessive penalties being imposed on late payment.

Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas is thus proposing that card lenders should be prohibited from charging exorbitant punitive interest rates on customers who might miss or dispute a billing.

Gullas said stronger regulation of card issuers would put hundreds of millions of pesos back into the pockets of Filipino families struggling to make ends meet, help households emerge from debt and promote responsible card use.

In the process, he says we will also be averting a consumer debt crisis similar to the one that ruined large financial institutions in South Korea.

Local card issuers charge interest rates of 3.25 to 3.5 percent per month, or 39 to 42 percent per annum, excluding late payment charges. On top of higher interest rates, card lenders usually impose a monthly surcharge of P300 or more on customers who miss minimum payments. In addition, issuers collect an annual membership fee of P500 to P1,000 per card.

Gullas stressed that with four million cards, issuers are amassing easily a windfall of P2 billion to P4 billion each year from member fees alone, at a rate of P500 to P1,000 per card. Yet, these fees are absolutely unnecessary.

In excess of four million cards have been issued to over two million Filipinos, according to the Credit Card Association of the Philippines. And as of end 2004, Filipinos had an aggregate outstanding balance of nearly P60 billion on their credit cards.

And if I may suggest to the two congressmen, credit card company agents should also be obliged to disclose all hidden charges to card applicants. That way, it is made very clear to the applicants that owning a credit card is no joke. Otherwise, it will just be plain highway robbery.

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