ONE Sunday in August 2014, a representative of Security Bank telephoned me to ask whether I had been in Laguna recently.
“No,” I replied.
In fact, I have never been to Laguna. The representative went on to mention that P40,000 had been withdrawn from our ATM account that morning. This was clearly a cause for concern since we had not used the account for some months and had never divulged the Personal Identification Number (PIN) to anyone.
Gratifyingly, within a few days, Security Bank refunded our money. We were delighted because the bank had been proactive. My experience of banks is that they tend to be reactive and to wait, then evaluate, customer communications.
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A less happy occasion occurred much earlier, in late August 2008. At this time we banked with BDO and bought a single-premium insurance policy through its then BankAssurance partner, PhilamLife.
We paid for the policy on Aug. 29 and were told that the policy documents would be issued on Sept. 9. This did not happen. By Sept. 17, having received no acknowledgment that our payment had been received, we made representations to BDO. The reply from PhilamLife was pert and said it did not consider that anything was amiss.
Much later, after I made many enquiries, PhilamLife sent me a “quit claim” form dated Sept. 19 which had my signature on it. I had not signed this document. In fact, I recognized that my signature been taken from my BDO signature card. Not only that, I was not even the person who bought the policy. It was another family member. The document produced by PhilamLife was fake.
I reported the episode to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) which kindly offered to facilitate a voluntary mediation meeting to clarify what had happened. I readily agreed to this, but unfortunately BDO did not. So the meeting did not take place.
I also made representations to the Insurance Commission (IC) which requested PhilamLife to respond to me “within ten days.” I never received any communication from PhilamLife nor did I receive any response from IC to my follow-up requests.
Consumer protection in the Philippines is not what it should be.
In fact, PhilamLife later threatened libel. The Revised Penal Code, Article 354 says in part: “Every defamatory imputation is presumed to be malicious, even if it be true, if no good intention and justifiable motive for making it is shown…”
But I have good intentions, and I have a justifiable motive. The take-up of insurance products in the Philippines is acknowledged to be low. Some have said that this is because Filipinos are perceived to be financially illiterate. I disagree. There are many reasons why it is difficult to sell insurance in the Philippines, one of which is that the level of trust has been, for a long time, perceived to be low. If the level of trust were to be higher, the sales would increase. My intentions are good.
In 2017, Mr. Kelvin Ng became CEO of PhilamLife. I wrote to him and told him of my tale of woe. I did not receive a reply.
Now it seems that he has changed the name of his company from PhilamLife to AIA Philippines.
I hope this is accompanied by a necessary change in its corporate culture.
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Recently, the Philippines was put on the “gray list” of countries whose financial institutions are not operating with sufficient probity.
Our banks and insurance companies can, and I believe will, regain international respect. This will stem from a more pro-active and vigorous investigation of cases where misconduct may have occurred./PN
