Bank of Philippine Islands

PHILAMLIFE AND BPI ANNOUNCE STRATEGIC LIFE INSURANCE JOINT VENTURE

Makati City, August 26, 2009. Philippine American Life Insurance Company (Philamlife), the largest life insurer in the Philippines, has agreed with Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) to acquire a 51% stake in Ayala Life Assurance Inc. (Ayala Life), BPI’s majority-owned life insurance subsidiary. Ayala Life will serve as the platform for BPI and Philamlife’s strategic bancassurance partnership.
The joint venture is expected to benefit from the combined synergies, first-class resources and strength of two leading companies in the Philippine financial industry. Philamlife will bring insurance distribution, product development, and innovation to the joint venture, particularly in the area of bancassurance, while gaining exclusive access to BPI’s customer base via its extensive branch network.
Philamlife’s President and CEO Trevor Bull said, “This partnership is a direct result of our strategy to focus on the core life insurance and wealth management business. Philamlife and BPI are strong and trusted brand names in the industry. This is an exciting and positive development that will significantly increase our distribution footprint and offer a substantially wider selection of quality life insurance products to BPI’s customers, which are keys to success under the growing popularity of bancassurance in the region.”
BPI President and CEO Aurelio Montinola said that this joint venture is fully in-line with BPI’s vision to offer a full range of financial products and services to its customers. He said, “While BPI has seen significant results in its bancassurance operations, there is still a large BPI customer base that remains untapped. This presents a great opportunity for the new joint venture company as well as for our clients to access a wider array of protection and savings products.”
Philamlife is currently in the process of becoming part of the AIA Group, subject to regulatory approvals. The AIA Group is a leading pan-Asian life insurance organization with a unique heritage of serving the world’s most dynamic region for 90 years, with over $60 billion in assets and a large base of over 20 million customers.
With 158 years of experience in the local banking industry, BPI is one of the largest universal banks in the Philippines today, offering a whole breadth of financial services to both retail customers and corporate clients. BPI serves more than 3 million customers through its network of over 800 branches and 1,500 Automated Teller Machines (“ATMs”) nationwide.

Ayannah sendah
Funding announcement: June 2013 Founded in 2010,

Ayannah is a gift-remittance service for unbanked overseas Filipino workers. Cash remittance services are one of the mainstream options for overseas workers outside the Philippines. This is exactly the reason why Ayanna stood out. Through Sendah and Sendah Direct, overseas workers can now send cash and physical goods such as toys, gift packs, medicines, gift certificates and even phone credits to friends and family back home. Its service is already deployed in around 7,000 retail outlets in the Philippines and it has processed over one million overseas transactions. Just this June, it received a $1 million round of funding led by Siemer Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures. Following the funding, it set its sights towards expanding to new markets and maintaining revenue growth in the domestic Philippine market.

Read more: 4 Philippine startups that successfully raised funds in 2013 http://www.techinasia.com/4-philippine-startups-successfully-raised-funds-2013/