MANILA — The Bank of the Philippine Islands can compete head-to-head with digital banks especially since it has more assets and physical branches to assist consumers, its president Jose Teodoro Limcaoco said Monday.
Limcaoco said BPI also has digital presence with its app considered as the top 2 mobile app in the country, next to mobile wallet GCash.
Its microfinance arm BanKo, recently launched a digital savings account with a 4 percent interest rate per annum, which is higher than traditional banks and can compete with other digital banks.
"Our advantage is that we have assets that can mitigate the high cost of liabilities that these fintech and digital banks are putting on, we got brick and mortar branches that can serve customers," Limcaoco told ANC.
"We may not be as agile as them only because we need to be careful in our systems because we have millions of customers so we have to be more careful, but I think we will compete head-to-head and we will come out quite successful," he added.
Digital banks are banks that have no physical branches. Six digital banks were granted licenses by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to operate in the country.