Aurelio R. Montinola III: ‘MAP Management Man of the Year’

Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) president and CEO Aurelio “Gigi” R. Montinola III was recently hailed as the “Management Man of the Year 2012” by the prestigious and influential Management Association of the Philippines, which cited him for “setting an example for Filipino professional managers through a track record of unblemished integrity, professional competence and strong leadership in his banking career.”

In an exclusive interview with The STAR, Montinola talks about how banking has mirrored the country’s wellbeing through the years and shares the secrets to his professional and personal success.

Excerpts from our interview:

JOANNE RAE RAMIREZ (JRR): You said the economy has improved in the last 10 years. Is it because the economic managers stood independently of the politicians?

AURELIO R. MONTINOLA III (ARM): Generally, the good news is, whether you agreed with their politics or not, all the Presidents appeared to pick professional people in the economic side because they all realized that it is important to have people who not only understood economics and business, but also were credible. So we’ve had a number of people over time, each had slightly different styles. Titoy Pardo, Cesar Purisima now. The Central Bank side has been also quite good because we had Jobo Fernandez, Gabby Singson, Paeng (Buenaventura) and now there’s (Amando) Tetangco.

JRR: I woke up to good news today, the 7.1 GDP growth.

ARM: Yeah, that’s how I describe it, a “super pleasant surprise.” Because I don’t think people expected that we could be that high. But in a sense, there is a private-public partnership because the government now has a very clear vision, taking care of their part. If you look at all of the governments of the world today, many are criticized for wasting resources, spending more than what they need, having too much debt. Here, it is the opposite. People have been very frugal on how they spend, and the second also, the debt, on a relative basis has come down considerably...

JRR: We borrow less or we pay our debts more?

ARM: The economics are significantly better now, the fiscal deficit, compared to all of the normal parameters, the Philippines is doing well. But maybe from a layman’s point of view, only in the last five years have we been in a situation where the foreign debt is lower than the foreign reserve. What we have in physical foreign cash is greater than what we owe in foreign debt. That’s from the point of view of the government.

JRR: In the last two years, what has changed?

Montinola III (center) receives his MAP Management Man of the Year 2012 award. With him are (from left) MAP search committee vice chairman lawyer Eusebio Tan, president Eduardo Francisco, judging committee chairman Dr. Jaime Laya and search committee chairman architect Felino Palafox Jr.

ARM: Clearly, the government. I think it’s more of their stand on certain things, they are clearer in where they want to go, they do their share to pull up the oar. In the past, the government could be considered a burden, a burden to the community because they might spend more on what they didn’t necessarily need, items that often were of a political nature. And now, it’s a question of thrust. Now they say, ‘we are going to use it in a particular area,’ it’s for tourism, it is for health, it is for schools. So, that’s one point. The second point is, I actually like the thrust. The government is spending more on education, they made a tough decision on that K to 12, tourism obviously has been potentially a much larger priority, well finance has done its share in bringing the country closer to investment grade.

JRR: All the economic indicators are up, is it a dream come true for you to have received the award at this point in time?

ARM: Definitely. It’s like a “bucket list” moment. It’s been a good year. I was able to play in Augusta (Golf Club), too, in the beginning of the year. These are “super feelings...”

JRR: Super feelings and this award... Did you ever dream it?

ARM: No.

JRR: Worked for it?

ARM: What happened was, I was off on my summer vacation and a nominator called and said, “Would you like to be included in this...” Then I said, “For what?” Then they mentioned it and said we’ll just need a few things. What I did was I just simplified. When I told my 11-year-old daughter about it, she said “Papa, what does Management Man of the Year mean? Best Senior Citizen Award?” (laughs)

JRR: You and your wife Ging have three girls? Are they also following in your footsteps?

ARM: I also have a 21-year-old and I have a 17-year-old. No, I’m sure they will do something else. I’ve been observing that most people don’t follow what their parents did. Even for myself, I’m actually following my grandfather. My dad was into trading, construction materials.

JRR: What was the lure of banking to you?

ARM: It’s an accidental good fortune. Like many people, you apply when you’re in a summer job. You typically accept the first one who accepts you. There was a summer internship with Citibank here and then a summer internship during my MBA also in Citibank and then I went into banking. I thought that it will be just five years, then go back to the family business, but when I came back to Manila,times were really bad because it was the time of Ninoy’s assassination. So I decided to go into banking for a while. Things were so difficult that what happened was, I felt like I should just be outside the family business and my father encouraged it. One thing led to another. It turned out that I liked what I was doing...

JRR: To somebody not in banking, what is so engaging or fulfilling about being a banker aside from the money?

ARM: I don’t personally think too much about the money side. We have this slogan “Let’s make it easy” and for me, I get the big kick if we can just improve the process, we could make it easier. All kinds of little things, but the little things help also for a better customer experience. And training. I’m very involved in getting people to get trained better. It’s a useful subject. I always tell people, whether you will eventually like banking or not, you can be in it for a while then you learn for yourself, handling your own personal finances. If you like it, you stay.

JRR: One thing also that struck me in your citation was the personal accolade, the citation of your “unblemished integrity” in banking and the way you’ve conducted yourself. How are you able to do that?

ARM: There are others who have done it too. I think I’m fortunate that I’m in a field where the people I deal with are professionals, and I work in a group, I call them “the best employers,” the Ayala group and BPI where it’s unthinkable not to have the highest integrity. So in a sense, we are also fortunate because precisely, we do it in a professional manner. We don’t get approached to do funny things. Because they know we won’t do it.

JRR: What are you sure of in this world? You know for sure that...

ARM: ... one day, I’ll be doing something else. I just came back from a 35th reunion in business school (Harvard), and most of the people there are all around my age, 61, 62. So I am in transition. There is a fascinating book that I saw, it’s called How Will you Measure your Life (by Clayton M. Christensen). The point is, whatever you’re doing, there will come a point that you will want to do something else. And that something else will also be contributory in a different way. There will come a time that I will be thinking of that.

JRR: So right here, right now, what is the best thing about a Montinola presidency at BPI?

ARM: I think, two parts. The first four years, trying to get the bank to go from product to customer and I always say that it’s easy to say, hard to do. You have to make people really believe it. If there’s a gray area between customer and bank, you decide in favor of the customer. We have this training service called the “Wow service” then we organized what we called “relationship managers,” whether it’s a personal level or you have somebody who talks to you directly. And then we changed the reward system so it could encourage teamwork and it could encourage something that could be customer-oriented rather than product-oriented. The next four years, we really concentrated on tenure. It started accidentally. It was 2008 and remember there was a Lehman crisis? We were hoping it would not come to the Philippines, and people would start worrying about their jobs. So we said, we better make a statement early that we’re going to continue. And what better statement to make than to increase the training and to get as many people trained as possible?

JRR: Do you wake up every day with a purpose...

ARM: Generally, I have been fortunate to be in consumer banking. Consumer banking, literally, is when you wake up, you don’t know how the world is going to turn out. And I think precisely because of that, I became very flexible, very adaptive. Intuitively, there is always a Plan B, without knowing that I have to go to Plan B.

JRR: You have it always in the back of your mind?

ARM: No. I think it’s also from experience. Why worry about the bad situation, if you can be positive and  to go forward and go to a good situation. Think positive.

JRR: What do you most value in your friends?

ARM: Authenticity, being interesting, being able to talk to them about anything... This is a tough interview (laughs).

JRR: Favorite color?

ARM: I like blue. I wear blues and grays. BPI is red and FEU is green (laughs)

JRR: I’ve always wanted to ask you how you manage your loyalty during a game between Ateneo and FEU.

ARM: Ah that’s easy, family first (his family owns FEU). But I get along well with both schools.

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