CEO INTERVIEW We cannot be truly sustainable unless we consider economic growth not only for our customers but also for our country
Ayala Triangle Gardens Tower 2 where BPI Head Offices are located as of June 2023 (Photo from Lobien Group website)
Tell us more about yourself. What’s your career like? What led you to the path of becoming a banker, and eventually, the head of BPI? Many people assume that my entire career was spent in banking and finance, which is fair, given that most senior bankers do begin and end their professional lives in the field — in some cases, within the same institution that gave them their first jobs. How I got here is actually through a series of personal and professional reinventions. After having earned my Mathematical Sciences degree, I started out in Silicon Valley as a programmer/analyst in a tech firm. This was the early ’80s and tech was the industry to be in. With Stanford (where I studied) being just a stone’s throw from The Valley, going into tech felt like the natural thing to do. It would have been the comfortable thing for me to stay. I enjoyed it well enough, and coding remains a casual hobby of mine. However, my early love for banking and finance never really died out. I’ve wanted to be a banker since I was young, due to my innate love for numbers and having been raised by a banker dad. So, when I had the opportunity to take postgraduate studies, I opted for an MBA rather than a master’s in computer science or engineering as many of my peers did, in hopes of reinventing my career path towards finance. That Wharton MBA did lead to my first banking job in New York. My stint at JPMorgan was soon followed by an invitation to return home as a manager in corporate finance with BPI.
I’d really like to say that “the rest is history,” and that my banking career was a straight trajectory to where I am now. However, the path to success is rarely easy or simple. I didn’t stay very long in BPI after my first assignment. I moved back and forth quite a bit among BPI, global banks, and Ayala Corporation before I found myself home — for good — at the helm of the bank I love. How I got here was a combination of many things: a very supportive family, lots of hard work, carefully cultivated relationships, serendipity, and my own willingness to take chances and to reinvent myself. What are your priorities as leader of BPI? One, to be the undisputed leader in digital banking. The pandemic has accelerated digital banking adoption among Filipinos, and all indicators say that there’s simply no turning back. If we truly want to be the Philippines’ undisputed banking leader, we must ensure that each and every one of our customers, without exception, has digital access to our services and products. Two, increase the share of SMEs and consumers in our loan book. Collectively, SMEs employ over 60% of the Filipino workforce. Supporting them through financial products that help grow and sustain their businesses positively impacts and helps secure the future of ordinary hardworking Filipinos. Three, close the gap in funding leadership. We want to be the leader and increase our market share in the industry. Four, establish the new role of branches as sales points and not only as service points. Branches will remain an integral part of BPI, but I believe their greater potential lies in providing financial advisory services and financial literacy sessions for customers, and as a space where our customers can explore the many ways in which we can help improve their financial well-being. Five, set the standard for sustainable and responsible banking. We will strive to be more inclusive and reach out to the underserved. For us in BPI, it is actually ESG + E. It is a formula unique to us, where the last E stands for Economic Growth, since we cannot be truly sustainable unless we consider economic growth not only for our customers but also for our country.
BPI Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala (center), and President and CEO Jose Teodoro K. Limcaoco (2nd from left) preside over the bank’s Annual Stockholders Meeting in 2023.
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