Union Bank of the Philippines (UnionBank) Head of Transaction Banking Mon Duarte introduced recently UnionBank’s various transaction banking solutions, particularly “The Portal,” its all-digital banking platform for corporate clients.
The objective was to make the digitizing of corporate clients more seamless in the so-called “New Normal.”
This was held recently during the fifth installment of UnionBank’s E-TalkTales series wherein Duarte differentiated UnionBank’s Transaction Banking solutions, which he defined as simply offering customized solutions to help digitize their corporate clients. He said traditional transaction banking helps manage flow of funds by facilitating collections and payments, over-the-counter check deposits, to the provision of armored car services for high cash transaction situations, among others.
Duarte’s discussion zeroed in on UnionBank’s “The Portal,” the digital banking platform specially designed for corporate clients. It offers a host of solutions such as bills payments, payroll, fund transfers, check writing services, merchant payment gateway systems, and credit facilities, and provides corporations with all their essential banking needs via a single platform.
Knowing that each corporate entity has unique needs and priorities, The Portal was designed to provide flexibility to clients and make it the preferred platform for those who don’t want the one-size-fits-all approach of other banks when it comes to providing corporate banking solutions.
Part of the flexibility offered by The Portal comes through various customization options available to clients. “Depending on the current needs of their organization, clients can choose only the solutions they want to avail of at the moment, and then adjust later on.”
To make it easier, UnionBank created a number of packaged solutions based on what it thinks would make sense for clients, which they can avail of anytime via The Portal website.
Another key feature of The Portal in terms of flexibility is the possible configurations for transaction approvals. “With this feature, corporates will be able to establish a specific maker-checker process for each transaction made by their team members. This will give them free control over who can make which transaction, as well as the maximum amount for each transaction depending on who makes it, among others,” Duarte adds.
With The Portal, UnionBank aims to make transaction banking as seamless for users as possible right from the moment a client starts using the platform, which is the onboarding process.
Onboarding is one of the most stressful phases of using a new platform for many corporates since it involves learning a new set of interfaces and processes. This phase can take a few days or weeks or even a few months to finish. With The Portal, however, UnionBank also digitized the onboarding processes so that clients can get into the platform in less than a day, usually within a few minutes, with no further training needed.
These are only a few innovative features of The Portal. As UnionBank continues its digital transformation journey, more services will become available in the coming months.
The Portal is not based on any third-party digital framework because it was built from the ground up. In creating The Portal, Duarte said UnionBank was guided by the principle of having a simple integrated platform in order to ensure the best user experience for customers. “For the Bank, providing superior transaction banking experiences to users is a top priority, and The Portal is the perfect representation of what it believes transaction banking should be.”