BIZ BUZZ: Wooing Citi’s clients
For Citibank’s about a million credit cardholders whose accounts will migrate to Union Bank of the Philippines’ (UnionBank) books by the second half of 2022, one question that comes to mind is: what will happen to the rewards that they have accumulated ?
UnionBank president Edwin Bautista was fortunately quick to reassure Citi clients that all of their rewards would carry over without any expiration date—unless there was an expiration date in the original term.
As such, Bautista said there was no need to rush to consume these rewards ahead of the transition of the consumer banking business from Citi to UnionBank.
“Those rewards are going to be honored and those products are going to continue,” Bautista told Biz Buzz.
We also heard from other sources that UnionBank is even considering to boost the rewards as a “welcome” gift to Citi’s cardholders, which are about five- to 10-times more affluent than the average UnionBank customer.
The incentive is a way to woo cardholders to keep their business with UnionBank even after the change in regime, against the backdrop of cutthroat competition in the consumer banking business.
Citi has about a million cardholders, only 5 percent of whom have bank accounts with Citi. The remaining 95 percent, UnionBank also intends to capture into its fold and convince to open deposit accounts with it.
—Doris Dumlao-Abadilla
Fruitas’ accurate survey
With the looming presidential elections set to be the biggest event of 2022, publicly listed Fruitas Holdings has decided once more to participate in the political exercise—not by endorsing any specific candidate—but by launching its usual informal survey, which was conducted successfully over the last two poll cycles.
Basically, the survey consists of providing customers the option of selecting cups for the beverages they buy from Fruitas’ stores and kiosks. There are five cup designs to choose from bearing the images of presidential aspirants Manila Mayor Isko Moreno, Senator Panfilo Lacson, Senator Manny Pacquiao, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Leni Robredo.
Fruitas Holdings, of course, is the food and beverage firm founded by entrepreneur Lester Yu selling fresh and affordable food products to the middle market via 25 brands like Fruitas, Jamaican Pattie Shop, Coco Delivery, Babot’s Farm and Sabroso Lechon.
Yu’s latest venture is Balai ni Fruitas which offers baked goods and plans to raise over P300 million through an initial public offering (IPO) in the first quarter of this year. No doubt the businessman was encouraged by the success of his holding firm’s P1-billion IPO back in 2019 which gave the group the financial wherewithal to weather the pandemic with aplomb.
As for the presidential cup survey, it may be an informal undertaking but Yu told Biz Buzz that the results of this simple gimmick actually turned out to be quite accurate in the two previous presidential elections, correctly predicting the poll victories of President Aquino and President Duterte. Will it be accurate for a third time to establish a trend? Abangan!
—Daxim L. Lucas
Intellectual energy pool
A renewable source of intellectual energy. This was how Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin Diokno described the ideas articulated in various newspaper columns of some of the country’s finest socioeconomic thinkers and compiled into a book called “Momen2m: More reforms for sustaining development.”
The newly launched book is a collection of articles written from 2019 to 2021 by economist/national scientist Raul Fabella, fellow economists Ramon Clarete, Emmanuel de Dios, Romeo Bernardo and Calixto Chikiamco and lawyer Kristine Alcantara (the only rose among the thorns). It was edited by veteran journalist Roel Landingin.
This came two years after the prepandemic launch of the first collection “Momentum: Economic Reforms for Sustaining Growth,” which featured the writings of Fabella, De Dios, Bernardo, Chikiamco and the late Cayetano Paderanga Jr.
“These columns serve as food for thought on key policy issues, which help readers make sense of the national economy,” said Diokno, who had written the foreword for both books and was likewise the keynote speaker when they were launched. Unlike the grand launch of the first book at Fairmont Hotel in October 2019, the launch of the sequel on Dec. 15 had to be done virtually.
In his foreword, Diokno said the writers had provided “timely commentary as the pandemic continued unabated and policymakers struggled to minimize the economic disruption in the rest of 2020 and 2021.” He said these columns had served as “crucial sources of independent insight on some of the most intractable problems facing policymakers as they faced a crisis unlike any in the past.”
On the part of the BSP, Diokno assured that the local monetary authority would stand ready to continue “doing whatever it takes” on the monetary side of the recovery equation. The BSP will only implement a data-driven exit strategy from this measures when it is certain that the roots of economic recovery have firmly taken hold, he stressed.
“The columns in this collection shed light on where we’ve been as well as where we’re headed. This compendium of ideas represents the views of some of our most distinguished economists, many of whom are my former colleagues at the UP (University of the Philippines) School of Economics, or acquaintances in government and reform advocacy circles. Their ideas serve as a renewable source of intellectual energy for maintaining the momentum of our economic reforms as we respond to and recover from the pandemic,” he said.
—Doris Dumlao-Abadilla INQ
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