Multi-awarded digital challenger bank Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) expanded its roster of global and regional awards with its latest laurel ‘Best Financial Inclusion Initiative’ from The Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services and Technology Innovation Awards 2023. The recognition highlighted its digital solutions – RCBC ATM Go and Moneybela Barangayan Banking for pioneering financial inclusion initiatives at the heart of its customer service.
The bank celebrated the achievements of RCBC ATM Go, the country’s first and largest network of bank-agnostic and mobile-point-of-service ATM Service, and RCBC Moneybela Barangayan banking, the Philippines’ first phygital (physical-digital) banking service. ATM Go’s social relevance to remote and rural Filipinos was put on the spotlight as it covered all Philippine provinces generating 100% nationwide coverage, an achievement which only RCBC has achieved so far. The service has been providing cash withdrawals, deposits, bank transfers, account management, bills payments, and e-loading services to geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas (GIDAs) such as Lake Sebu in South Cotabato and Cullon in Palawan. The latest ATM GO deployment was in Turtle Island, Tawi-Tawi, a 5th class municipality positioned at the southwestern tip of the Philippines and a brief 30-minute boat ride from Sabah, Malaysia.
Meanwhile, RCBC Moneybela Barangayan Banking’s strategic partnerships with local government units were highlighted as a distinct strategy that RCBC employed to immerse deep into remote and rural barangays. RCBC’s flagship Barangayan banking was proven to be effective in boosting rural bank onboarding by 210%, and bringing digital and financial literacy to far-flung areas. RCBC combined the powers of RCBC Pulz, RCBC Diskartech and RCBC ATM Go to create RCBC Moneybela Barangayan and make it a transformative bank campaign to communities that are underserved and unbanked.
The bank has consequently been reaping international and local recognition for its wide cocktail of digital solutions that it has been offering, scaling, and improving since the pandemic. Due to its massive digital transformation drive, RCBC leaped from 8th position in 2018 to 5th in 2022 in the list of the Philippines’ largest banks in terms of assets, making it one of the fastest growing banks and a leading digital challenger bank in the Philippines.
RCBC Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer Lito Villanueva was enthusiastic to announce and receive the award, remarking that it was another proof that the concepts of financial inclusion and hyper-personalized banking services are not contradictory but complementary. He added that RCBC is ready to embark on its next phase of expanding financial inclusion by offering a wider and newer set of services that Filipinos are yet to experience.
“This latest recognition from The Asian Banker is a testament that financial inclusion and quality banking services tailor-fit for the individual are not opposites. Instead, RCBC has proven that it is critical to find the sweet balance between the two and understand that both are co-dependent values in the operations and services of a bank,” said Villanueva.
“The next era of RCBC banking will be marked by services that are curated to serve the most personal needs of the individual and that seek to address a wider set of social problems that persist in underserved communities,” added Villanueva.
The bank’s digital innovations have earned it a four-peat Best Bank for Digital award by Asiamoney, the first Youtube ‘The Challenger’ award to be given to a bank, the Eye on Innovation Award by Gartner, the topmost rank in the recent Philippine Best in Customer Service Survey by data gathering firm Statista and national broadsheet Philippine Daily Inquirer, and triple laurels in the recently held Bank Marketing Association of the Philippines (BMAP) Awards 2023.