Avaloq is enabling the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), one of the Philippines’ biggest banks in terms of capitalization, with its Software as a Service (SaaS) solution to help improve customer experience and boost the efficiency of five business units and subsidiaries.

Pascal Foehn, Avaloq Executive Board Sponsor for Asia and Avaloq Group COO, said: “The Philippines is seen as a home market for Avaloq given our substantial operating presence as well as the high level of expertise and talent we have in the country, so we are absolutely delighted to announce this new relationship with BPI. We are very pleased that BPI is leveraging Avaloq’s strength of supporting multiple business units – ranging from private banking to asset management and investment banking – on a single platform. The bank has also chosen to use our leading SaaS solution, as we believe that cloud-based operating models will increasingly be seen as the platform of choice in a fast-digitizing financial services sector.”

BPI engaged Avaloq to help capitalize further on market opportunities and the ongoing need for efficient, digital-led service capabilities optimized through a cloud-based SaaS operating model. The Avaloq Banking Suite will allow the institution to bring all areas onto one consolidated platform, delivering powerful scale benefits and greater data analytics at better cost.

For BPI, utilizing best-in-class digital technologies and delivering convenient digitally enabled services to customers are fundamental to the bank and its long-term growth aspirations. The roll-out will help BPI to further strengthen its integrated business model around customer centricity, delivering a highly personalized level of service and richer set of products to wealth clients at a time of increased competition.

The deal with BPI, the first client for Avaloq in the Philippines, crowns a record year for new business wins and growth in the Asia Pacific region for the Swiss fintech. It also complements Avaloq’s significant operational presence in the Philippines: the firm has two offices in the country, including one of its three global research and development centres, and around 300 staff, with 200 in software development and 40 in application support.

BPI, founded in 1851 and the first bank in Southeast Asia, is the Philippines’ fourth-largest banking group by assets. The institution reported PHP2.21 trillion (USD43.4 billion) in total assets for FY2019, up 5.7% year-on-year. BPI has now embarked on the second phase of a comprehensive, multi-year digital transformation programme and is benefitting from strong demand for its digital channels: active users of BPI Online and BPI Mobile, for example, grew by 8% in 2019 to 1.9 million, more than 22% of the bank’s customer base.

In November 2019, Avaloq won the tender to manage Bank Mandiri’s wealth management business in Indonesia, while at the start of December 2019 it announced that Maybank Group, South East Asia’s fourth largest bank by assets, had adopted the Avaloq Banking Suite, to serve Maybank Premier clients in Singapore; other regional clients include DBS Bank and Kasikorn Bank in South East Asia, and Agricultural Bank of China, China Industrial Bank and China CITIC Bank International in North Asia.