SSS taps Landbank and DBP as its fund managers

by Info @Brand Zone | November 16, 2023

The Social Security System (SSS) tapped the Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) as its new local fund managers to enhance the return on investment (ROI) from its investment portfolio for the next three years.

SSS President and Chief Executive Officer Rolando Ledesma Macasaet announced that LBP-Trust Banking Group (LBP-TBG) and DBP-Trust Banking Group (DBP-TBG) will manage the P2 billion worth of investible funds for Pure Fixed Income starting October 2023.

LBP-TBG and DBP-TBG received P1 billion in investment funds each, which they got in two tranches last October 13 and 17. They will manage the funds within specific risk parameters for three years to expand the SSS investment portfolio and generate more earnings.

“We see that SSS will greatly benefit from tapping external fund managers to manage a portion of our investible funds. We can take advantage of their expertise to help grow the SSS funds and diversify the investment portfolio,” Macasaet said.

LBP-TBG and DBP-TBG will complement the other fund managers hired to manage Pure Fixed Income investibles. Earlier this year, SSS tapped Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) Asset Management and Trust Corporation, and Security Bank Corporation-Trust and Asset Management to handle P2 billion funds allocated for Pure Fixed Income investments.

SSS Executive Vice President for Investments Sector Rizaldy T. Capulong said that under Republic Act No. 11199 or the Social Security Act of 2018, SSS can appoint local or foreign fund managers to handle its Investment Reserve Fund (IRF). IRF is a portion of the SSS Reserve Fund allocated for investments wherein income derived from it goes back to the reserve fund and helps it grow.

Hiring qualified local fund managers has been part of SSS' investment strategy since 2016. “Tapping more investment savvy fund managers is a best practice worldwide, particularly with pension funds. This strategy allows pension funds like SSS to access the expertise of fund managers in frontier markets where they do not have a competitive advantage like foreign investments,” SSS Senior Vice President for Fund Management Group Ernesto D. Francisco, Jr. explained.

To date, SSS has already awarded the management of seven segregated investment mandates for Pure Fixed Income Fund, Balanced Fund, and Pure Equity Fund worth P8 billion to five local fund managers.

LEARN MORE

Social Security System

Maaaring bisitahin ang official website ng SSS sa https://www.sss.gov.ph o tumawag sa mga numerong 1455 ( SSS Hotline ) at 1-800-10-2255777 ( Toll-Free No. )

SSS Email: member_relations@sss.gov.ph

Kahit maraming mawawalan ng trabaho.. Landbank-DBP merger, oks kay P-BBM

ni Mylene Alfonso | March 29, 2023

Suportado ni Pangulong Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., ang pagsasanib puwersa ng Landbank of the Philippines at Development Bank of the Philippines bago matapos ang taong kasalukuyan.

Ayon kay Finance Sec. Benjamin Diokno, natalakay ang naturang usapin sa sectoral meeting na ginanap sa Malacañang kahapon.

Mangangahulugan aniya na ang pagsasanib ng dalawang financial institutions ay mauungusan na ang Banco De Oro partikular sa isyu ng asset.

"By merging the two, it will now become the number one bank in the Philippines, okay, ahead of Banco De Oro in terms of asset," sabi ni Diokno sa press briefing sa Palasyo.

"Now, the President expressed the desire to merge the two to make it the biggest bank in the country because of the recent financial developments abroad ‘no. And that’s really the best practice – the biggest bank usually is owned by the state globally," wika ng

kalihim.

Magkakaroon din aniya ng savings ang pamahalaan ng nasa P5.3 bilyon kada taon o P20 bilyon sa susunod na apat na taon.

"Ang advantage nito talaga is that we will be able to save a lot of money for the national government,” dagdag pa ni Diokno.

Aminado si Diokno na marami ang mawawalan ng trabaho sa pagsasanib puwersa ng Landbank at DBP ngunit maaari aniyang piliin ng empleyado na magretiro na lamang sa ilalim ng government pension system o tanggapin ang liberal package na iaalok ng gobyerno.

Nabatid na may 752 branches ang Landbank habang nasa 147 branches naman ang DBP kung saan 22 DBP branches na lamang ang mananatili sa bansa.

UnionBank leverages AI for improved customer experiences

by Info @Brand Zone | December 27, 2022

In order to keep up with the changing behaviors of today’s banking customers, Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), the country’s leading digital trailblazer, has unveiled an innovative tool that leverages Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) to enable and accelerate better and more meaningful experiences for its customers while maximizing value creation for the Bank when it comes to its products and services.

“At UnionBank, we take delivering the best customer experience very seriously. To ensure our products, services and interactions across channels keep on delighting our customers, we make sure we continuously get feedback from them and we work closely with our Data Science and AI counterparts to help us analyze the vast data we get to allow us to keep on providing what our customers love and quickly address those that need improvement,” said Albert Cuadrante, UnionBank’s Chief Marketing Officer.

One of the key aspects of this DSAI-powered tool from UnionBank, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) Free-text Analysis Tool, is that it can automate the identification of user needs and gains through direct feedback analysis. NPS is an important consumer metric used by the Bank to estimate the loyalty and satisfaction of its customers towards its products and services. Customers can rate the Bank with a satisfaction score ranging from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest) and give feedback or reviews to expound on their scores and recent experiences.

The solution is designed in a way that allows it to understand the sentiments of customers through free text found in various channels and platforms, such as the UnionBank Online mobile app or surveys answered in branches.

“The information that we are able to get from our various feedback channels, whether through online surveys, comments on social media and actual interviews, allow us to have more personalized offers and engagements with our different customers, ultimately deepening their relationship with us,” said Cuadrante.

Based on the tool’s performance over a period of eight months, UnionBank said it was able to streamline the analysis of more than 10,000 monthly survey responses and over 35,000 monthly inquiries and complaints from customers. This has proven to be invaluable for the bank’s product teams in understanding the customers’ key concerns and prioritizing actions to be implemented in a fast and efficient manner.

“The tool, which leverages NLP (Natural Language Processing), customer data analytics, and clustering techniques, identifies the top issues raised by multiple customer segments in just three to five minutes, saving around one to two weeks and significant man-hours of manually screening and processing texts,” said Gabriel Isaac Ramolete, a Data Scientist from UnionBank’s AI and Innovation Center of Excellence (AI & Innovation CoE).

"It is challenging for humans to read thousands of feedback texts to understand its impact on customer experience. Technologies like NLP function best at manually extracting insights from big and unstructured data. The tool that we developed and deployed at UnionBank acts as a decision support system that helps with prioritizing and making more informed decisions”, said Dr. Adrienne Heinrich, UnonBank’s AI & Innovation CoE Head.

To help the product teams analyze root causes and provide proactive recommendations that can help customers, the tool has an automated dashboard featuring sentiment analysis for reported customer experiences and product performance summaries, which is made readily available to the Bank’s customer experience teams.

“Because of this, we were able to raise the bank's NPS above its local competitors, and more importantly, leave more human-critical tasks to the bank's employees, so they can ideate, communicate, and execute actions optimally,” Dr. Heinrich concluded.