UCPB confident of meeting P3.6-B income target

MANILA, Philippines - United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) is optimistic it would meet its P3.6-billion income target for 2012, bank officials told The STAR.

UCPB executive vice president and CFO Cesar Rubio said the projected income this year is 20 percent higher than the actual P3.05 billion earnings last year.

“We are working hard to hit our target,” the UCPB official said.

The bank posted a net income of P1.64 billion in the first six months of the year, up 22 percent from last year’s P1.34 billion, as the bank grew its loan portfolio as well as its trading and securities earnings by double digits.

Continuing growth in earnings would be driven by the bank’s aggressive consumer lending programs, said UCPB senior vice president Norman Martin Reyes.

“Our focus is consumer finance which has been growing over 30 percent in the past three years,” Reyes said.

Reyes said in the next months, UCPB would be launching new products in the areas of mobile and Internet banking.

In the first semester, total loans went up 20 percent to P77 billion from P63.96 billion in the same period last year. Corporate loans increased 17 percent while consumer loans rose at a much faster pace of 35 percent.

UCPB is a leading provider of financial products and services to corporations, private and government institutions, middle market companies, small - and medium-sized businesses and individuals in the Philippines.

Established in 1963, UCPB was the first private Philippine bank to become a universal bank, obtaining its expanded commercial banking license in 1981.

UCPB has always been at the forefront of customer service innovations. It was among the first banks to introduce an ATM service in the late 1980s. In 1991, it took the lead with three other banks in organizing Megalink, the Philippines’ first shared ATM network, which now has 23 member banks and nearly 9.5 million cardholders.

The bank has since expanded its electronic banking capability with telephone banking and Internet banking facilities.

At present, the bank has 188 branches and over 200 ATMs nationwide.