If weekends are the ultimate executive luxury, Jerry Ngo has been living without them recently.
The chief executive officer of East West Banking Corp., the country’s 11th-largest lender by assets, recently aired his tongue-in-cheek “gripe” at Filinvest Group’s Storytellers Night, an appreciation gathering for journalists.
For the past 15 weekends—and five more still to come, Ngo and about a dozen EastWest Bank senior executives have been sent back to school by their boss, Filinvest Development Corp. vice chairman Josephine Gotianun-Yap. The subject is artificial intelligence. The classroom is a hybrid program designed by the National University of Singapore, blending online modules with face-to-face sessions. Attendance, clearly, is required.
“We have no more weekends. And this will continue for five more weeks,” Ngo said, feigning disappointment. Then came the tell. “The nature and ways of working (in the banking industry) are changing dramatically. That’s something we are investing heavily in. We are looking at how to reimagine banking as we move forward. So, abandon nyo.”
Ngo, an alumnus of Citibank—the global financial institution whose Filipino “graduates” have gone on to help rewrite local banking rulebooks— knows a thing or two about reinvention. He noted that EastWest Bank’s mobile app now ranks among the highest-rated banking solutions on both the App Store and Google Play. “We’ve been quiet about this,” he added, “but I think we should get that message out there.”
The industry has already taken notice. EastWest Bank recently won Best Digital Ecosystem and Platform at The Asian Banker Philippines Awards, recognition of its steady push to enhance customer experience through accessible, technology-driven solutions rather than flashy but shallow innovation.
That restraint is deliberate. As early as 2023, Ngo had been warning of an inevitable convergence of physical and digital banking, where branches, data, and platforms blend into a single customer journey. In contrast to rivals obsessed with speed in payments, EastWest chose a more old-school banking priority: getting credit into customers’ hands, efficiently and at scale.
The roadmap reflects that bias. Digital lending products such as Easy Way and Easy Biz, alongside the bank’s Store of the Future project, anchor a strategy that favors monetizable tech over vanity metrics. The bank has already invested P2 billion in information technology and cybersecurity, and is planning to more.
Still, even Citibank “graduates” must keep learning. Ngo has since conceded that setting aside just a tenth of total expenses for technology may no longer be enough to keep pace with competitors.
Hence the lost weekends. In a banking sector being quietly but relentlessly reshaped by AI, EastWest’s leadership seems to have decided that going back to school may be cheaper than being left behind.
