BSP: More Filipinos now with basic deposit accounts
‘Deposits under BDAs climbed to P27 billion in the first quarter, or 432 percent higher than the P5.1 billion posted in the same period a year ago.’
Daily Tribune‘Deposits under BDAs climbed to P27 billion in the first quarter, or 432 percent higher than the P5.1 billion posted in the same period a year ago.’
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas on Friday said more Filipinos now have bank accounts as the country's number of basic deposit accounts or BDAs surged by 170 percent to 21.9 million in the first quarter of this year, higher than the 8.1 million in the same period last year.
Deposits under BDAs climbed to P27 billion in the first quarter, or 432 percent higher than the P5.1 billion in the same period a year ago.
BDAs allow clients to open interest-earning savings accounts with required initial deposit of just P100 or less and have no minimum maintaining balance and dormancy fees. Opening these accounts also only requires basic identification documents.
"Introduced by the BSP in 2018, the BDA aims to meet the needs of the unbanked and low-income sector for affordable and easy-to-open bank accounts," a statement from the BSP said.
Conversion of registered accounts
The Bank said BDA growth was partly a result of the conversion of registered accounts under the Philippine Identification System or PhilSys into BDAs. This process created 7.5 million BDAs.
"An initiative of the Philippine Statistics Authority and the Land Bank of the Philippines, the co-location strategy aims to onboard unbanked PhilSys registrants into the formal financial system after their biometrics capture at registration centers," BSP explained.
Another 4.3 million accounts from five banks that also started offering BDAs were added from January to March this year.
Based on the first-quarter data by the BSP, there are already 158 traditional and digital banks offering BDAs.
The BSP aims to expand the population of adult Filipinos with bank accounts from 51 percent last year to 70 percent this year.
