Awards for Excellence 2018
For many years Union Bank of the Philippines was a solid but unspectacular universal bank – decent but neither the biggest nor the boldest. Then it set about a new mission: to make itself the most digitally sophisticated bank not only in the Philippines but the region. That makes it Euromoney’s best bank for transformation in Asia this year.
UnionBank resembles an early-stage DBS, a bank it has studied closely in deciding how to reinvent itself. Like DBS’s Piyush Gupta, its top executives Justo Ortiz and Edwin Bautista are given to grand statements like “digitize or perish is the bank’s mantra” and “forge the future rather than watch it unfold.” Also like DBS, it has tried to go back to basics and ask questions like: what will be the role of the branch in the future?
UnionBank has answered this question with the creation of a new idea it calls The Ark, which changes a branch from being a place to process transactions to a place to get on board digital channels or to seek specific advisory services.