State-run Land Bank of the Philippines, the country’s fourth-largest lender, said Wednesday total assets breached the P2-trillion mark in 2019, setting a record for the state financial institution that continued to expand the access of the agriculture sector to affordable credit while posting high-income growth.
LandBank president and chief executive Cecilia Borromeo said in a report to Finance Secretary and LandBank chairman Carlos Dominguez III that the bank’s total assets reached P2.033 trillion in 2019, up by 8.38 percent from P1.876 trillion in 2018.
“This new LandBank record was propelled by deposits amounting to P1.78 trillion, which recorded an uptick of 7.68 percent from P 1.66 trillion in 2018,” she said.
Borromeo said the bank’s net income also grew by 19.6 percent to P18.51 billion in 2019 from P15.48 billion in 2018.
“This translates into a return on equity of 13.19 percent, which is above the industry average of 10.38 percent as of September 2019,” she said.
LandBank’s total capital posted a 13.2-percent increase last year to P148.99 billion from P131.62 billion in 2018.
Gross loan portfolio rose 2.82 percent to P891.77 billion from P867.29 billion in 2018. Net investments increased by 12.53 percent to P694.86 billion last year from P617.47 billion in 2018.
The bank has 409 physical branches across the country and 2,195 automated teller machines, of which 238 were installed in 2019. It has 46 provincial lending centers, including two that opened in 2019 in the provinces of Lanao del Norte and Quirino.
Dominguez said that in contrast to the Development Bank of the Philippines, which is the state’s wholesale bank, LandBank is the government’s retail bank which is why it is on the right track in opening more branches nationwide to expand financial access to more Filipinos.
“You are the ones which should open branches in every street corner. And hopefully, sometime within the next 20 years, our overseas Filipino workers will finally get on ground and use this as their branch,” Dominguez told Borromeo.
Borromeo said LandBank was one of the most aggressive in pushing the digital platform.
“In fact, it is the only big bank that has added feature in the Mobile Banking App that allows faster fund transfer to any individual LandBank account enrolled in I-Access or through Instapay via QR Code. As of now, 597 transactions were recorded amounting to P1.9 million since its launch in November 2019,” Borromeo said.
LandBank also exceeded its target of extending P231.25 billion worth of loans to the farm and fisheries sector in 2019, with P236.31 billion released as of December 2019, representing a 102.19-percent accomplishment.
The bank said it was able to assist 1,032,982 farmers and fisherfolk in 2019, exceeding its one-million target for the year.