Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) announced on Monday that its investments in digitalization have positioned the bank to be ready for the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) open finance strategy, which began in 2021.
UnionBank President and CEO Ana Aboitiz-Delgado shared during an online briefing of Aboitiz Equity Ventures (AEV) that the bank is working closely with the BSP to advance the open finance system.
“Open finance is in very early days in the industry and it requires industry players to cooperate with each other because it requires us to work with each other,” Delgado explained. “We feel that it is best channeled through the BSP at this time.”
The BSP defines open finance as the sharing of customer-permissioned data among banks, financial institutions, and third-party providers to develop innovative financial solutions such as real-time payments and greater transparency for account holders. The system emphasizes consent-driven data portability and collaboration among stakeholders with shared standards for data security and privacy.
Delgado emphasized that UnionBank is well-prepared, noting that their internal architecture is already designed to be open-finance-ready. “Within our own ecosystem, within our own implementations, the architecture that we are deploying is already open-finance-ready,” she said.
