MANILA – More bank accounts were opened in the country in 2017, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said Saturday, noting that “significant improvements” were being implemented in the banking sector to “boost account ownership.”
The number of bank deposit accounts in the Philippines rose to 57.1 million in 2017, 6.8 percent higher than the 53.5 million accounts in 2016, data from the BSP’s State of Financial Inclusion in the Philippines 2017 report showed.
The number of unbanked local government units also declined to 554 in 2017 from 582 unbanked offices in 2016, it said.
The availability of “low-cost, no-frills deposit accounts” which can be opened “even without standard identification documents” were among the “significant improvements in financial inclusion” that will “boost account ownership and acceptance of digital payments,” the BSP said in a statement.
Giving banks the “flexibility to determine the appropriate size and model of a banking office for a specific area or locality based on market needs” also helped improve the banking sector, it said.
The Philippines was the 15th country in the world in terms of financial inclusion, a 2015 study conducted by Washington-based Center for Technology Innovation (CTI) showed.
But a 2017 BSP survey showed only 22.6 percent of 68 million Filipino adults had formal financial accounts in banks, cooperatives, and/or microfinance institutions. (ABS-CBN News)
