Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation was honored with another coveted regional award after it was chosen by the Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards as “Inspirational Brand” from a wide selection of entries from the Asia Pacific region under the financial services industry. The recent accolade is a testament to the bank’s successful and massive digital transformation journey.
The bank clinched the prestigious recognition by spotlighting its dedication to make banking more accessible and convenient to the underserved and unbanked segments of Philippine society. RCBC exhibited its pioneering initiatives to materialize the Philippine government’s vision of realizing a truly digital society. Among these is the RCBC Moneybela: Barangayan Banking, the country’s first phygital banking solution, which has brought financial and digital literacy, financial inclusion, and livelihood opportunities to 13,116 barangays out of 42,000 barangays nationwide. Its efforts to make banking life-enabling and empowering to all Filipinos boosted rural bank onboarding by 210%.
The Moneybela Barangayan banking also features the largest network of bank-agnostic and grassroots-oriented sim-powered mobile point of service ATMs – RCBC ATM Go, which has 100% nationwide coverage and has presence in many geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM).
Meanwhile, the country’s first multilingual financial inclusion application in Taglish and Cebuano – RCBC Diskartech, makes financial services such as savings, fund transfers, mobile loads, telemedicine, insurance, and loans accessible and convenient to the Filipino mass market. It holds a very competitive annual savings rate of 6.5%.
RCBC Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer Lito Villanueva highlighted the recent recognition for the bank’s continuous financial inclusion trailblazing mission. It focused on communities that RCBC has helped transform in the past four years for bringing financial services and livelihood opportunities.
“We are filled with utmost gratitude to award-giving bodies such as the Asia Pacific Enterprise Awards for continuously recognizing the diligence and ingenuity of the bank and its talents in creating and scaling strategies that make the finance available for all,” said Villanueva.
“More than the bank and the highly exceptional people that have worked on these initiatives, the most important stars that this award really put into the center stage are the stories of the Filipinos whose lives have changed because of our highly-innovative and empathy-driven solutions,” added Villanueva.
Villanueva shared that such awards are important to recognize the valuable work that banks and financial technology players in the country have invested to make banking a part of the modern Filipino lifestyle.
RCBC is Asiamoney’s Best Bank for Digital for four consecutive years, and the first bank worldwide to be awarded ‘The Challenger’ by YouTube. The bank was also awarded Best Customer Service Award by the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Statista. It leaped from eighth position in 2018 to fifth in 2022 in the list of the country’s largest banks in terms of assets, a feat the bank attributes to its massive digitalization efforts.
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