Robinsons Bank eyes commercial banking status

Robinsons Bank Corp. will operate as a commercial bank once it gets the necessary license from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

A KB license will allow RobinsonsBank to offer its clients a wider array of innovative financial products, such as foreign letters of credit and other trade instruments, and put the bank in a greater capacity to serve as it aims to be among the country’s top 10 commercial banks.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent approval of the merger between Robinsons Savings Bank and Robinsons Bank Corp. completes the legal and regulatory requirements needed by the BSP to award Robinsons Bank Corp., the surviving commercial bank entity from the merger of the two Gokongwei-owned banks, a KB license.

JG Summit Holdings Inc., the umbrella unit of the Gokongwei Group, acquired in early 2010 controlling interest in the Royal Bank of Scotland and later renamed it as Robinsons Bank Corp.

The BSP had already approved the merger between the two banks in December 2010.

As of the end of March, JG Summit’s banking group posted a net income of P56.7 million, up 13.4 percent from P44.5 million a year ago.

Growth in net income was attributed to the 34-percent growth in revenue to P434.15 million from P323.39 million in the same period last year.

“The steady growth in core revenue and the sustained improvement in asset quality make us very optimistic about the bank’s business prospects for the rest of 2011, especially after SEC’s approval of the merger and our upcoming KB license from the BSP,” Robinsons Bank marketing head Jules Cruz said.