Aboitiz-owned remittance firm to expand operations

Petnet Inc., a remittance company owned by conglomerate Aboitiz Equity Ventures Inc., announced a rebranding initiative on Thursday in line with plans to expand its business, both for money transfer and new areas such as loans.

Petnet, established 17 years ago, said it was changing its brand name to Pera Hub. The rollout of this new identity would be completed across 2,100 branches in its nationwide network by July this year.

The move was in step with the company’s plan to grow in scale, amid fierce competition in a crowded space apart from the uncertain economic picture overseas.

Petnet is already the largest agent network here of United States-based money transfer giant Western Union. The entry of the Aboitiz Group, which acquired 51 percent of the company last year for about P1 billion, paved the way for its expansion to new areas in terms of payment solutions.

“What we wanted to happen was to increase market share, not just within the Western Union network but also in the space of loans,” Lorenzo Ocampo, Petnet president, told reporters on Thursday. He cited an existing tie-up with City Savings Bank for salary loans of  teachers and government employee pensioners.

Ocampo declined to discuss specific figures in terms of the company’s financials. But he cited challenges in the remittance business for specific markets.

For example, the oil price slump has taken its toll on economies reliant on the resource, such as those in the Middle East.

Ocampo said the firm saw a “decline in transactions” in terms of remittances coming from that region in the first quarter of 2016. However, this was offset by money flowing from Filipino workers based in the United States, he said.

Of its 2,100 locations across the Philippines, a little over 400 are company-owned, Ocampo said. He added the plan was to increase company-owned locations to 750 by 2019 or 2020.

Ocampo said expansion areas would include Mindanao, which remained “underserved.”