Unionbank to onboard all biz clients to The Portal by 2021

Unio n Bank of the Philippines is eyeing to onboard all its corporate clients to the online banking platform by next year amid the increasing demand for the digital due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We look to complete our digitization efforts before the end of 2021. The conversion effort is a bank-wide initiative from sales to marketing and to the branches,” the Aboitizled bank told the Businessmirror in an e-mail.

Unionbank Vice President Antonio Miguel D. Dans, in a press event last week, said that the bank has been helping its clients to transition to a digital banking platform called The Portal.

Currently, Dans said that 65 percent of Unionbank’s corporate clients have already migrated to the online platform, an increase from just 25 percent in September last year.

Dans identified the onboarding process as one of the hurdles to encourage corporate clients in shifting to digital banking. With this concern, he said that Unionbank has been improving the procedure while ensuring the quality of the products.

“We also look to further improve both the product and the onboarding process, such that there is much more value in going digital and so that when they do decide to convert, it is seamless and effortless,” UnionBank said.

The pain point of creating a digital platform for corporate clients is the customization, the Unionbank official said, which delays the turnaround time. “It is unlike in a retail sector for personal accounts,” Dans explained. “There’s an out-of-thebox products on the App Store or Google Play and you just download it and start using it.”

To address this, Unionbank is offering packaged solutions for the clients. Dans, however, stressed that they can still customize according to their needs. Providing templates, still, has helped minimize the queries and accelerated the turnaround time to onboard, he added.

In addition, the Unionbank official said that its digital platform is offering a first for online banking among business clients— mobile check deposit.

“Clients can now scan their checks. I think we’re the first bank to allow this for businesses,” he said. “There is a huge demand for this in the business sector which still mostly transact through checks.”

Apart from this, the listed bank said that it will be launching new features to improve customer experience.

“We have several features in the pipeline that will further address concerns such as government physical documents, and for security and transparency,” Unionbank said.

Unionbank saw its net earnings slip by 6 percent to P4.5 billion in the first semester from P4.79 billion in the comparable period last year. This translated to a return on equity of 9.2 percent for the period, which was lower than last year’s 11.1 percent.