CIMB Bank, a digital-only lender with a commercial banking license, anticipates attracting as much as 1.5 million new depositors before the year is over.
This was bared Thursday in a briefing in Taguig City for online reporters by Ankur Sehgal, chief business and strategy officer at CIMB Philippines, who said the plan requires generating new depositors of one million up to 1.5 million in its roster of clients.
This year’s target, he said, forms part of the larger goal of generating a depositor base of 10 million over the next three years. CIMB Philippines has thus far attracted 7.5 million depositors to its brand of service.
“We are an embedded bank. We solve problems for our customers and we create value. We come out with cool stuff,” CIMB Philippines chief executive officer Vijay Manoharan said in explaining the lender’s performance the past five years when it first operated in the Philippines.
As digital lender, CIMB Philippines extends loans to clients as small as P10,000 to as much as P1 million, Manoharan said.
Looking ahead, Manoharan’s business strategist said the regulator, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, will likely scale back the rate at which it borrows from or lends to the various banks over the near horizon.
According to Sehgal, that window can be as soon as three months down the line or maybe in six.
He said the anticipated easing of interest rates can be as deep as 50 basis points lower when the now complete policy-making monetary board of the BSP decides on it at some point ahead.
The BSP held the benchmark interest rate a second time at 6.5 percent in December last year consistent with market consensus. That benchmark stood lower at only 6.25 percent for seven consecutive rate-setting cycles that began in April up to October last year.
The projected easing in the benchmark rate recognizes that while headline inflation will likely remain elevated, the consensus is for the rate to ease to around 4.2 this year instead of 4.4 percent as earlier projected.
