United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) has posted robust growth in e-banking services in 2003 with the value of customers’ transactions performed over the bank’s electronic delivery system increasing 61 percent to R5.0 billion from R3.1 billion in 2002.
The growth reflects the continued rise in the popularity of UCPB’s e-banking offerings among its clientele owing to their reliability and ease of use.
The bank currently offers four e-banking services — UCPB Telebanking, UCPB Connect retail Internet banking facility, UCPB.biz corporate banking facility and UCPB 1Time Internet payment facility.
These services are available 24/7 and provided free of charge to bank clients.
By the end of 2003, the number of corporate and individual clients using UCPB’s e-banking services rose 46% to 40,698 from 28,421 in 2002.
Their volume of transactions during the year more than doubled to 2.8 million from 1.8 million in the previous year.
"UCPB is fast emerging as one of the leaders in e-banking and we will continue fortifying our market position in the years ahead in line with our corporate vision to become the best bank for clients," UCPB president and chief executive officer Jose L. Querubin said.
Querubin stressed that as the bank’s customers’ needs evolve and become increasingly sophisticated, UCPB will move to provide them more channels to access banking services and better tools to manage their financial assets.
A key initiative, he said, is the formation of a separate Transactional Banking Group, a specialized unit that has been tasked to expand UCPB’s e-banking offerings with particular emphasis on the highly lucrative cash management and trade services.
UCPB Telebanking recorded the highest usage growth among the bank’s electronic banking channels. Accessible via a landline or mobile phone, the facility handled more than 1.4 million transactions valued at
R3.9 billion in 2003 compared to 831,842 transactions valued at R2.4 billion in 2002.
A major attraction of UCPB Telebanking, apart from its easy access, is its capability to process transactions in real time. For example, when clients send funds to another UCPB account in any part of the country, the funds are credited instantaneously to the recipient’s account and not an hour or a day later. UCPB account holders in the provinces may access the service via a toll-free number 1-8001888-UCPB.
The usage of UCPB’s Internet and WAP banking facilities comprising of UCPB Connect for retail clients and UCPB.biz for corporates also exhibited strong growth last year.
In 2003, Internet and WAP banking transactions grew 67% to 1.36 million from 1.02 billion in 2002, while value of the transactions rose 50% to
R1.02 billion transactions from R679 million.
UCPB Connect offers multi-channel access, which makes the service very convenient for users. Clients can perform their transactions via their personal computer, WAP-enabled mobile phone or WAP-ready PDA (personal digital assistant).
What really sets UCPB Connect apart from other similar offerings in the market is its free transaction notification feature. UCPB Connect notifies users of the completion of their transactions either via e-mail, text message or fax message.
It also alerts the users when their account balances fall or exceed the level they had previously set or when a bill is due, which makes for a more efficient management of their funds.
In addition, UCPB Connect allows users to make future-dated transactions. Through this function, users can schedule payments of recurring bills or transfer funds on a regular basis well in advance of the due dates, and thus do not have to worry about missing payment schedules.
On the other hand, UCPB.biz provides corporations a very flexible online tool to manage their financial assets.
The facility currently has three modules: the Cash Manager Module, the Post-dated Check Warehousing Module, and the 1Time Payment Module.
Through the Cash Manager Module, clients can monitor their account balances including float items, request for statements of account for the past 12 months to be sent via e-mail or fax, and transfer fund to any UCPB account all in real time. (Edu H. Lopez)
