City Savings Bank (CitySavings) copresented the recently concluded Philippine Financial Summit (PFS) organized by the University of the Philippines–Junior Finance Association (UP-JFA) at the Sky Hall, SM Seaside City Cebu.
PFS Cebu is part of a bigger campaign and the flagship event that UP-JFA spearheads annually dubbed as the “Investment Month.”
This year the student organization focused on gathering and training students and young professionals from different organizations through financial-literacy and –awareness programs, with topics ranging from financial mastery to the economic potential of the Visayas region.
“Investment in people give the best returns,” UP Diliman student and Investment Month Chairman Ian de Luna said as he welcomed over 500 participants from the Visayas region.
Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) Senior Executive Vice President and CitySavings Chairman Eugene Acevedo was one of the summit speakers. Focusing on digitization trends in banking, Acevedo asked the students how often they visit a bank since, in one survey, people rated going to the bank just slightly above going to the dentist.
“When people go to a bank to ask for a loan, for instance, they often feel embarrassed because the bank asks for many things. Customers want to be treated in a special way. So we asked ourselves why banks can’t change the way they treat customers.” he said.
“We’re starting to make banking more interesting. In UnionBank, for example, we came out with The Ark. It’s a branch with no tellers. A customer can go to the Ark and do banking via a tablet while sitting on a nice chair having coffee. It’s a self-service banking facility that is completely paperless. Banks now need to focus on user experience,” he added.
Acevedo also talked about Bitcoin and the blockchain technology behind it. Bitcoin, the decentralized ledger network, allows users to transact directly, peer to peer, without a middleman acting as central authority.