BPI taps AI, digital cash for economic growth
By 2026, BPI expects 50 million Filipinos to benefit from its digital system; also seen, moving forward, are smarter AI tools aiding humans with their investment portfolios, investment alternatives, wealth planning or insurance
Bank of the Philippine Islands president and CE0 Jose Teodoro Limcaoco says BPI's digital system's current 12 million customers are expected to grow to some 50 million by 2026. ‘It's a long process but we need people to get used to the idea that cash can be transferred digitally,’ he said. ‘We're working with retail stores where we'll put our technology and hopefully customers will walk into these stores and be onboarded into the BPI system.’
Photograph by Kathryn Jose for the daily tribune
The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) is harnessing artificial intelligence or AI to make more Filipinos, especially in the provinces, financially free and cyber-secure.
“The goal is we want better financial inclusion in the country. This country is severely backward because of a lack of economic opportunities for many people,” BPI president and chief executive officer Jose Teodoro “TG” Limcaoco said during the weekly Rotary Club of Makati meeting in which he was the guest of honor and speaker last Tuesday, 2 April.
Limcaoco said BPI’s AI-powered mobile app featuring basic banking services and digital cash allows money to circulate within lower-income communities, boosting the finances of their individual households and businesses.
“What happens is the physical cash there gets sucked up as it goes to a sari-sari store and a sari-sari store then goes to a major grocery store in the city, and eventually goes back to Metro Manila,” Limcaoco explained.
“A community cannot flourish without cash because commerce cannot take place,” he stressed.
Win-win
Limcaoco said digital cash and technology enable a win-win situation as money can be exchanged digitally at low costs to the bank and its customers.
“We’re a country of too many islands to move cash everywhere. We cannot have cash centers because it’s expensive to build and operate them,” Limcaoco said.
Digital cash is the customers’ money in the bank and used through a mobile app instead of pulling it out from a physical wallet, while AI is used by machines to collect and analyze customers’ data to help the bank provide them proper products and speed up its services.
By 2026, BPI expects 50 million Filipinos benefiting from its digital system. Limcaoco shared that the system now serves 12 million.
“It’s a long process but we need people to get used to the idea that cash can be transferred digitally,” he said.
That process, Limcaoco said, begins with retail stores under its “agency banking” strategy for opening BPI accounts.
These stores include Robinsons-owned stores, Ayala malls, Uncle John’s, Southstar drugstores and Seaoil gas stations.
“We’re working with retail stores where we’ll put our technology and hopefully customers will walk into these stores and be onboarded into the BPI’s system,” he explained.
BPI now has 5,000 partner-stores, Limcaoco added.
Power of AI
Limcaoco said AI allows wealth-building and protection through its multiple functions.
First, its huge data-gathering provides BPI with various types of data that describe clients’ behaviors, including those of entrepreneurs.
“We take economic data and profitability of stores. For example, we can now tell where we can open a branch that serves micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs),” Limcaoco said.
Based on its AI-generated report, he shared that many MSME clients and business transactions spur in third-class municipalities where there are “lousy” governments.
“This is very important because when the local government is lousy the entrepreneurs take over. They don’t have the support of the government so they do their own business and they need banking,” Limcaoco observed.
“So we’re looking for lousy local governments to open microfinance branches,” he said.
