Banks Urge PH Workforce to Learn Blockchain

During a media roundtable in Tech-Up Expo that happened on April 27, 2018, Mr. Edwin Bautista, CEO and President of Union Bank, stated that the Filipino workforce should learn the blockchain to meet its incoming demand.

Blockchain, the groundbreaking technology of today, is disrupting major industries around the world. Mr. Bautista shared that this technology is being used in other economies but is not yet getting the same recognition in the country.

Although bitcoin is more popular, blockchain is the technology that runs it. It is reported this year that UnionBank partnered with Visa for the deployment of Visa B2B Connect. It is a system that can facilitate cross-border payments and can cut transaction time from 3 – 5 business days to at least within 24 hours.

Read more: Visa Partners with UnionBank to Build a Blockchain-Based Payment System

“We have to develop our blockchain programmers. We need training for that, so we can provide good employment to Filipinos,” – Mr. Edwin Bautista, CEO and President, UnionBank of the Philippines

Mr. Bautista also shared that there are still around 761 internal processes in UnionBank that can incorporate the blockchain such as fund transfers and the opening of accounts.

Mr. Bautista said that investing in the new technology is cheaper than legacy technologies.

UnionBank aims to be the country’s premier digital bank as they also launched The Ark. The Ark is a bank branch that uses an iPad instead of the usual paper slips for transactions. Customers can even experience a car or a house before getting a loan with the help of virtual reality.

Read more: How UnionBank Embraces the Blockchain

“When you take a look at our income for the last two years, our core income has been growing at a very fast clip — 20 percent year-on-year. And you can only achieve that when you do something significantly different. The net effect of that is we can book more loans because we are faster, we are able to turn out products much faster, we’re also able to increase our balance sheet sides without increasing our cost,” – Mr. Edwin Bautista, CEO and President, UnionBank of the Philippines

PLDT also jumped in the blockchain bandwagon by joining a major blockchain consortium. The company partnered with major telecom carriers around the world to develop a cross-carrier platform for the telecom industry.