The 7th part of the Union Bank E-Talk Tales was held last December 9 with UnionBank President and CEO Edwin Bautista gave an overview of the Bank’s milestones in the past year and how it went from providing help for Filipinos to survive the pandemic to creating a better digital normal for everyone.
2020 has been a year or triumphs and struggles for UnionBank as they have moved to help different sectors to cope up with the challenges of the ongoing pandemic.
From helping the government for the disbursement of the Social Amelioration Program, to helpping LGU’s in distribution of cash or loan proceeds to constituents. And to helping out private companies micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) digitize amid the pandemic through its MSME platform GlobalLinker, and through MSME-leaning platforms Sentro, SeekCap, and bux, which are offered by its fintech spinoff UBX. To date, more than 27,000 online shops have already been made using Sentro, SeekCap now has more than 16,000 MSME signups, and bux has over 92,000 users. GlobalLinker’s user base is also now at more than 38,000.
Another sector of society that UnionBank was able to assist especially at the height of the pandemic were teachers, with the help of its thrift bank subsidiary CitySavings Bank. To date, CitySavings has extended a total of P26.1 billion in teachers’ loans, P3.2 billion in motorcycle loans, and 2.9 billion in MSME loans to beneficiaries.
And now, with the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic in the rearview mirror, UnionBank has begun the next major phase in its digital transformation journey, going full-speed ahead from merely displaying its resilience in the face of an unprecedented global health crisis, toward a renaissance in innovation and co-creation.
UnionBank has been a leader in the practice of the agile methodology, which enables the Bank to react quickly to any situation and achieve innovation at a much faster rate. But the Bank knew it had to become much faster. So, to do this, the company started migrating to an even faster way of working: DevSecOps. Short for “development, security, and operations,” DevSecOps is an ideology that aims to integrate security into every stage of the development-deployment cycle. With this new methodology, the Bank has been able, among other advantages, to test new features that they develop much faster and deploy the said features on an almost real-time basis. Moving forward, DevSecOps will play a key role in the creation of new services for the Bank.
Aside from DevSecOps, another key element of the Bank’s digital renaissance is data science and AI. This will be implemented across various verticals within the Bank, from mobile banking to credit, from algorithms to operational enhancements, among others.
“This is really the time wherein, together we can usher in a renaissance in the area of banking and technology. It’s an area where the Philippines can not only be a fast follower, but can actually be a trailblazer in the banking world,” Bautista said.
