Metrobank
Last year was a fruitful and challenging time for Metrobank. The group held its leading position, drawing from a rich capital base and a deep pool of experience, to stay ahead of its main competitors. At the same time, the bank rationalised its branch network to achieve greater service efficiency, by consolidating, relocating, or converting regular branches into mini-branches in better locations to service their respective markets. “We remained aggressive in sales and marketing, launching new or re-packaged existing product lines to cater to captive client bases,” says chairman Antonio S Abacan, Jnr. “These included longer-term deposits, new variants of common trust funds and similar instruments in order to diversify the funding base and satisfy our clients’ demand for such. Of course, this was done simultaneously with raising low-cost savings deposits, so as to strike a balance and ease potential pressure on interest costs. “We made fresh investments in technology, pursuing co-operation with renowned global providers to obtain technical improvements for our delivery channels with the aim of boosting operating efficiencies. For example, we fine-tuned our teller system, expanded customer access to more ATMs worldwide, and initiated a number of upgrades for our phone banking, mobile banking, and internet banking facilities to allow customers to perform more real-time bank transactions over our electronic channels.”
