Unionbank extends credit card offers to schools, establishments

CEBU, Philippines - Aboitiz-led Union Bank of the Philippines, in its bid to intensify its credit card presence, is adopting an innovative concept via specialized credit card service tapping small organizations and communities in the country.

Aside from boosting its membership-base, the bank also aims to expand its corporate social responsibility (CSR), by helping partner organizations on their projects and social service initiatives.

The bank is now partnering with schools and university organizations, including hotels and wholesale establishments, providing unique services to members based on the partner-organization’s requirement.

Recently, Unionbank inked partnership with the St. Theresa’s Alumnae Association (STAA) to offer five unique credit privileges to its members, in its effort to create practical platform in the credit card industry.

Hoping to attract the over 3,000 active members of STAA, Unionbank senior vice president for credit cards Manuel Santiago Jr. said part of the deal is to allocate a portion of credit card revenues to STAA projects.

“The only difference in this program is we are able to give back something to the organization,” Santiago said.

According to Santiago, one of the strategies to grow its credit card business, is to build products and services unique to an organization of community.

In the past, Santiago said Unionbank credit card was able to partner with large organizations. This time, the universal banking company, is zooming in to provide specialized credit card services to smaller organizations, communities, and establishments.

While the credit card industry in the Philippines had been experiencing a slow down in performance specifically last year based on Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas (BSP) report, Santiago hopes that with this novel approach, Unionbank will be able to gain a foot hold in the market.

The bank which has been in the credit card business in the last 11 years now has a total of over 300,000 credit card members. Santiago said aside from growing the number of holders, the bank is also continuing the development of more value-added products and services to attract credit card usage in the Philippine market, together with credit card issuers such as VISA.

Over the years, the Philippines is one of the low credit card usage performer in Asia, as majority of consumers still using cash in their purchases.

Unionbank’s credit card business is contributing about 12 percent of the over-all bank revenues, Santiago said.

Unionbank ended the year 2009 with an earnings contribution of P1.7 billion, up by 103 percent year-on-year (YOY).

The bank is 38.7 percent owned by the Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV), 22.7 percent of its stake belongs to the Social Security System (SSS), while 16.1 percent of the bank’s share is owned by Insular Life Assurance Co. (FREEMAN)