ABOITIZ-LED Union Bank of the Philippines, Inc. (UnionBank) expects its overall growth for 2016 to beat 2015’s performance with the lender’s bottom line in the first nine months of last year positioned to be the bank’s biggest leap, its top executive said.

Union Bank of the Philippines, Inc. said its income for 2016 was likely better than the prior year’s performance. — BW FILE PHOTO

“As of the third quarter, we are poised to deliver the highest income that we’ve ever achieved,” Edwin R. Bautista, UnionBank president and chief operating officer, told BusinessWorld in an interview with asked for his overall growth prospects for the bank last year.

The country’s tenth largest bank in asset terms as of end-June 2016 saw a triple digit growth in its net income in the nine months ended September last year at P8.1 billion, soaring by 122% from the P3.7 billion recorded in the same period of 2015, driven by the lender’s robust customer acquisition.

Mr. Bautista said 2016 “would be a very good year” for the bank in terms of income compared to its performance in 2015. “Third quarter pa lang (As of the third quarter) we already exceeded the whole year of 2015, so it can only get better,” Mr. Bautista said.

The listed lender raked in P6 billion in net income at end-2015, slipping by 28.4% from the P8.4 billion it booked in 2014 on the back of more expenses that year amid an industry-wide decline in trading gains, even though its core businesses grew during the period, according to the bank’s annual report uploaded on its Web site.

Asked how UnionBank’s fourth-quarter performance was, Mr. Bautista said: “We haven’t announced it, but there’s no reason why it will be worse than the first three quarters [of 2016.]”

Asked for the ratio of the bank’s client portfolio, Mr. Bautista said that more than half of UnionBank’s customer revenues is comprised of retail customers while the rest are made up of commercial and corporate. He noted that the bank is “strong” in all three segments, but noted that the consumer segment was its “biggest source of business from a revenue standpoint” for 2016 as it occupied a large margin last year.

Shares in UnionBank gained 35 centavos or 0.45% to close at P78.35 apiece on Monday. — Janine Marie D. Soliman

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