The Philippines banking sector has strengthened significantly in recent years, tracking general economic trends and benefitting from prudent measures put into place over time to boost capital and improve supervision, corporate governance and transparency. The local institutions that emerged from the late 1990s are stable and more wary of excessive risk and asset-liability imbalances. The...
Philippines Financial Services
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Chapter | Trade & Investment from The Report: Philippines 2014
For a number of years the Philippines worked hard to lower tariff rates, with the average weighted tariff applied falling from 22.4% in 1989 to a low of 2.6% in 2003. However, rates have begun to creep up again. The Philippines is actively considering a number of liberalisations to better align itself with the more open of its regional peers and to better integrate itself with the global economy...
Lenders in the Philippines are readying themselves for a further tightening of regulatory oversight, with the requirements of Basel III, as adapted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the central bank, due to come into effect at the beginning of next year. While the transition is not expected to be overly burdensome, the cost of greater security could be a short-term dip in profits.
Legislative reforms opening up the rural banking segment to wider foreign investment could see an injection of funding into at least some of the almost 600 small lenders. However, it is likely that only a few will attract an overseas partner.
The central bank, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), has moved to boost banking services in rural regions by lifting restrictions on the number of branches small lenders are allowed to operate, while trying to convince rural banks to merge to strengthen their capital base.
A recent announcement that plans to raise the capital requirement for insurance companies could be delayed beyond 2016 could give local and international insurers more time to focus on growth areas such as microinsurance and bancassurance.