MANILA, Philippines--The country's first mobile microfinance bank will soon be up and running as the Bangko Sentral ng Philipinas has approved the entry of sister firms Globe Telecom and Ayala Corp. into a savings bank unit of Bank of the Philippine Islands.

The new bank will be renamed ?BPI Globe Banko, A Savings Bank? and will use the license of Pilipinas Savings Bank. It will be launched this month, said BPI senior vice president Teresita Tan, who will be named president of the new bank.

As agreed upon earlier, BPI and Globe will each own 40 percent of the new bank while Ayala Corp. will get 20 percent.

In a recent interview, Tan said the bank would be nicknamed ?Banko??meaning ?my bank??and would soon open its first branch in Greenhills.

?We?re required by the BSP to have at least one satellite branch per region but this will really be a mobile bank,? Tan said.

The bank will have coordinators who will offer its services. The bank, which will ride on Globe?s technology, will offer microfinancing of P3,000 to P150,000; SME (small and medium enterprise) loans worth P150,000 to P500,000, and wholesale funding to microfinance-oriented nongovernment organizations (NGOs) worth between P500,000 and P80 million. Doris C. Dumlao