SECURITY Bank Corp. (SBC), one of the country’s leading universal banks is strengthening its presence in Mindanao.
The P94 billion-strong bank has come up with “Mindanao Expansion Plan” this year as they saw the big potentials and bright prospects in the island-region saying all major businesses roads lead to Mindanao, particularly in Davao City.
Alfonso Salcedo Jr., president of SBC told reporters last Thursday, October 20 in a media roundtable interview at Park Inn by Radisson that the plan will cover all its three business pillars: wholesale business, financial marketing, and retail banking business.
“It is expected that more businesses are looking to expand in Mindanao, we want to make sure that we got our fair share of that growth and so far so good, we have not seen any negative factors in the ground,” he said.
He added that the expansion of branches covering the retail and Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) market will take the lead for the company’s expansion plan.
Leslie Cham, executive vice president of SBC, said they would also set up 20 more branches within the next two years in Mindanao.
The additional branches will be established in Davao IT Park, Buhangin, Cabaguio, Calinan, Lanang, Mintal, and Matina.
While outside Davao City, the bank will expand its presence in the cities of Tagum, Cotabato, Mati, Midsayap in North Cotabato, Zamboanga, another in Agusan, Gensan and Cagayan de Oro.
At present, there are a total of 23 branches in Mindanao.
Cham said that they will be opening its Bukidnon and Ozamis branches by the last quarter of the year.
By the end of 2016, SBC will have a total of 25 branches in Mindanao. In the Davao City alone, Jason Ang, senior vice president of the bank, said they have now over 15,000 clients.
Cham shared that the company is pouring about P7 million to P8 million of investment every branch expansion. Each branch has an average size of 150 square meters.
Salcedo added that in before setting up a branch, they would look at the potential growth of the area.
“More often, we also follow on real estate in terms of development especially on areas where malls and condominiums are constructed,” Salcedo said.
As a whole, SBC has a total of 280 branches as of October 2016.
“We should end up with 292 branches this year and we are looking at having 450 to 500 branches by 2020,” Salcedo said.
On the retail side, Salcedo said, the company is planning to put up more hubs to handle more of the retail loan applications. The company, at present, has existing hubs in Davao, Cagayan de Oro and General Santos. It is gearing towards building another hub in Mindanao but final area of expansion has yet to be identified. But they are looking at Zamboanga City.
“We are strengthening the manpower of our existing hubs,” Salcedo said.
Furthermore, Salcedo added, that other move they will be taking under the Mindanao plan is the expansion on corporate/SME side “which is building our manpower on the wholesale business.”
For this year, SBC celebrates its 65th anniversary. The bank ranked as the fifth largest bank among private, domestic universal banks in the Philippines in terms of capitalization.
