UnionBank: Pioneering innovations towards a brighter future for MSMEs

The micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) sector play a very important role in the country’s economy. Not only does it facilitate economic activity and the continuous flow of money and goods, but it also provides employment and income to countless Filipinos.

As part of its Tech-Up Pilipinas advocacy, Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank), the country’s foremost bank for MSMEs, is committed to helping the Philippine MSMEs by leveraging digital platforms, data analytics, distributed ledger technology, and other technologies to provide entrepreneurs with easier access to capital to support their growth aspirations.

Continuously applying its technological and analytical expertise to provide MSMEs with easier and expanded access to credit, UnionBank is digitizing the supply chain for M/SMEs with UnionBank’s Supply Chain Financing. This is the first financial supply blockchain in the Philippines.  Built within the Bank’s corporate banking platform The Portal, UnionBank’s Supply Chain Financing provides convenient and easy access to working capital for all participants in the supply chain .

Because the platform utilizes blockchain, it allows UnionBank to take a fully digital, consensual, and community-based approach to supply chain financing with a secure and automated platform, revolutionizing the way entrepreneurs do business through various features, including the digitization of invoice and demand order processing, dealer’s financing line, and payables discounting, among others, in addition to making financing products more accessible.

As of writing, the UnionBank’s Supply Chain Financing has been used by more than 200 MSME customers, with 58 supply chain community anchors available. It has also generated more than 7 billion in loans and 12 billion in trade transactions to date.

Another one of the Bank’s industry-leading solutions for MSMEs is UnionBank’s  Business Loans available in  SeekCap Marketplace . Offered by the Bank’s fintech spinoff UBX, SeekCap is an embedded financing platform that provides loan products designed to suit the needs of MSMEs. SeekCap makes loan applications easier and more accessible, and customers can apply for a loan and get approved on the same day using an analytics-driven scoring system and without the need for the usual amount of forms and documents.

Aside from this, SeekCap has also been a key component for UnionBank in many of its MSME-centric partnerships with co-creators from both the private and public sectors. Last year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, UnionBank partnered with leading e-commerce platform Lazada to provide an emergency credit lifeline through SeekCap to Lazada sellers that were heavily affected by the pandemic. The initiative has helped Lazada sellers secure emergency financing for the various needs of their business, such as inventory and payroll.

UnionBank also partnered with healthcare management provider Maxicare for an initiative that allows MSMEs that have healthcare plans with the latter to avail of loans through SeekCap ranging from P50,000 up to P1 million, with a repayment period of over 36 months. Application and approval are done completely online, minimizing the need for physical paperwork and reducing the approval period to a single day.

To provide more opportunities to the MSMEs of Pasig City, UnionBank partnered with the City’s local government unit through its Pasig Tapat program for an initiative that allows qualified MSMEs to easily secure a UnionBank Business Loan via SeekCap. Through the Bank’s industry-leading digital capabilities, the application and disbursement processes are made more efficient. The product also uses a non-traditional credit scoring system to encourage more MSMEs to borrow from the Bank.

All of these innovative solutions prove that UnionBank is truly a bank that MSMEs can rely on, gaining international recognition including Asiamoney’s back-to-back Best Bank for SMEs winner and Asian Banking & Finance’s SME Bank of the Year 2021.

“We at UnionBank continue to utilize our digital expertise to support the growth of MSMEs in the country in line with our Tech-Up Pilipinas advocacy. We believe that supporting these enterprising Filipinos is key to achieving our overall goal of enabling inclusive prosperity in the Philippines,” said UnionBank Chief Mass Market and Financial Inclusion Executive Manuel G. Santiago, Jr.

ADVT