Gov’t plans partial privatization of Overseas Filipino Bank

The Department of Finance (DOF) said yesterday that the government plans to partially privatize the Overseas Filipino Bank (OFB) after the successful takeover of state-run Land Bank of the Philippines.

In a statement, Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III said that OFB needs to develop its digital banking system to keep the lender abreast of the rapid advances in technology and clear the way for its partial privatization in the future.

Dominguez has already asked the assistance of the International Finance Corp. (IFC), a sister organization with the World Bank, in helping set up a digital banking system for OFB.

During a recent meeting with World Bank and IFC officials, Dominguez said he wants the OFB to start with a clean slate and leapfrog to digital banking to make it more effective and responsive in catering to the financial needs of overseas-based Filipinos.

Given that the OFB has not yet invested heavily on legacy systems that are now fast becoming outdated, Dominguez said it can “leapfrog” to new technologies to enable it to operate as a digital bank.

“It’s tabula rasa. No legacy mistakes here. But we don’t have the people and the system. So we’re looking at your expertise to assist here,” Dominguez told the World Bank delegation led by Victoria Kwakwa, the regional vice president for East Asia and Pacific of the institution.

Also at the meeting was Nena Stoiljkovic, the IFC’s vice president for Asia and Pacific, along with other IFC and World Bank officials.

“We’d love to take a look at that,” said Stoiljkovic in response to Dominguez, and said the IFC is undertaking “similar types of interventions in other countries.”

The OFB was one of the campaign promises of President Duterte to overseas Filpino workers (OFWs) in 2016 that the Department of Finance (DOF) under Dominguez had helped fulfill earlier this year.

The DOF has expanded the bank’s coverage to include all overseas-based Filipinos to make it more inclusive.

Dominguez said that a digital banking system for the OFB could later lead to less state interference, with the Land Bank of the Philippines, which has made the OFB a subsidiary, controlling less than 5o percent of it in the future.

“We just need funds for all these, and we’re looking for assistance in this leapfrogging operation. This will allow us to partially privatize it in the future. Even bring down the share of Land Bank to below 50 percent. These are things we’re looking at,” Dominguez said.