Strategy and Performance

Metrobank, the second largest private bank in the Philippines, consistently works towards enabling both corporate and individual clients achieve their business goals and maximize their potential.
We create and customize financial solutions to meet our stakeholders’ needs, continuously expand our operational scope and reach, and lead in community service. This is our way of living up to our brand promise, “You’re in Good Hands,” embodying our customer-centric view.

Together with our subsidiaries, we aim to be the trusted partner of our valued customers by providing them with tailored products and services in new and meaningful ways.

Our key strategies are anchored on:

• enhancing customer experience
• expanding digital banking solutions
• improving operational efficiency
• having sound and effective corporate governance and risk and compliance management
• investing in people development

As the Parent company, Metrobank sets the tone for the overall strategy of the Group, directing management’s focus with respect to near and long-term planning. Major initiatives implemented at the Parent level are always cascaded down to subsidiaries, ensuring the entire Group moves in cadence towards achieving a common goal.

GROWTH

We aspire to be the preferred bank of our valued customers and further boost our market share by being a client-obsessed, agile, and innovative organization. To achieve this ambition, we will:

• Maintain our dominance in the corporate and commercial segments, and further expand our retail customer base.
• Continue to expand our reach through new distribution channels, intensify our marketing campaigns, and further grow our presence in Metro Manila and in developing areas in the countryside to serve new markets and contribute to nation building.
• Acquire new customers by elevating customer experience and offering relevant products and services with distinct features and strong value propositions.
• Continue to apply our effective pricing strategy framework to loan products to provide affordable yet competitive rates to our customers.
• Continuously review our credit policy to ensure this is updated and remains relevant to potential new target market, without compromising on credit quality.
• Deepen our existing client relationships by employing data mining anchored on a risk assessment framework. We will apply a targeted approach to identify customers who represent cross-selling opportunities, leading to a delightful client experience.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Metrobank strives to provide exceptional customer experience, which we regard as a collective and shared responsibility of every Metrobanker. To meet this goal, we have adopted the following strategies and taken certain actions:

• We established the Customer Governance Committee to ensure customer protection standards are understood and followed across the organization.
• We require all Metrobankers to undertake relevant courses on Metrobank’s Customer Protection Policy to promote customer experience and complaints-handling standards, and continuously build a culture of excellence across the organization.
• We invested in a Customer Feedback Management platform that enables us to quickly receive and evaluate customer feedback, and promptly resolve customer requests and complaints.
• We continue to roll out initiatives to enhance customer experience, such as undertaking process and structural changes in our Consumer Lending group’s after-sales servicing, improving client responsiveness, and making the management of customer complaint cases more efficient.

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

Continuously assessing our systems and processes across all stages of the customer journey remains a priority. We will evolve, optimize, and streamline these using process re-engineering, robotics, and automation to eliminate duplicate functions, reduce turnaround time, and improve cost-management. To this end:

• We started to centralize the back-end processing of consumer lending for more effective process and service level management. Initiatives include transferring the administrative or non-customer facing functions from our branches to our front-liners, converting these customer touch points into more meaningful conversations such as product or investment advisory instead of just transactional servicing.
• We mounted a campaign to transition our retail and corporate clients into digital banking in order to give them the convenience of “anytime, anywhere” banking using secured online and mobile platforms.
• Together with our subsidiaries, we are keeping our IT infrastructure robust by continuously making substantial investments into IT projects and improving our data management and analytics to support the changing needs and preferences of our clients.

In support of our goal, our subsidiaries, First Metro Investment Corporation (First Metro), ORIX Metro Leasing and Finance Corporation (ORIX), and Philippine Savings Bank (PSBank), are also carrying out the initiatives to achieve enhanced operational efficiency.

DIGITAL INITIATIVES

We recognize the need to keep in step with today’s fast-changing digital environment and are thus evolving the way we engage with our customers.

Through digitalization, we aim to transition our customers from a multi-channel state (i.e., engagement is across various touchpoints of the Bank) to a mobile-enabled and omni-channel experience, enabling customers to avail of self-service options at their convenience. To achieve this goal:

• We are further enhancing and upgrading our digital platforms by migrating relevant branch services to digital channels.
• We plan to utilize QR codes in shifting our traditional sales channels to a digital application to reduce operational costs and streamline application process.
• For corporate clients, we will continuously enhance our Metrobank Business Online Solutions (MBOS), a seamless and secure end-to-end cash management facility that facilitates various business banking transactions servicing.
• To support our aspiration to become our customers’ primary financial adviser, in addition to being their preferred bank, we are also digitally transforming our financial education initiatives.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, COMPLIANCE, AND RISK MANAGEMENT

Sound and effective corporate governance enables Metrobank to build a culture of integrity and sustain our business amidst a rapidly-evolving business environment. The Group maintains a steadfast view on compliance changes in the regulatory landscape and continuously strengthens its adherence to regulatory requirements through the following:

• Our Data Privacy Department, through its ongoing Privacy Impact Assessment, conducts end-to-end bank process reviews to identify potential issues on data privacy. It also implements required changes to align/standardize processes across all areas nationwide.
• The Group also aligns their products and services, as well as their operations, with the UN Sustainable Development Goals to comply with various regulations and ensure the viability and sustainability of our business models.

The Group aims to further improve its risk management framework by integrating best industry practices, as well as its understanding of risks, based on customer behavior.

• We continue to institutionalize risk awareness by aligning our risk management framework across the Group using a top-down approach. We will continuously conduct risk awareness training and mentoring programs so that every employee is equipped to identify and address potential risks, contributing to the overall resilience of the company.
• We will also continue to exercise prudence in risk management by adopting risk mitigation and controls in areas such as Anti-Money Laundering/Know Your Customer policy, lending and deposit-taking, automation of client pre-transaction notifications, generation of billing statements, and the use of clients’ digital signatures.

PEOPLE DEVELOPMENT

We believe that an engaged workforce ultimately leads to satisfied customers:

• We continuously invest in people development by strengthening the professional development program of our employees, equipping them with the necessary skills training and knowledge transfer they need to perform their jobs effectively. These trainings/workshops are in areas such as communication and presentations skills, critical and analytical thinking, product and project management, and leadership.
• We will establish specific work-related Key Result Areas (KRAs) to guide employees on how they can positively impact the organization, and for the Bank to properly monitor employee performance.

MEANINGFUL BANKING

We are firmly focused on our growth and core business objectives anchored on delivering “Meaningful Banking” to our clients through relevant financial solutions, best-in-class customer experience, and secured and efficient operations. All these are guided by our mission, vision, and values to deliver on our brand promise, “You’re in Good Hands with Metrobank” to our customers, employees, and all our stakeholders.