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A COUPLE
of local bankers recently took unscheduled weekend
flights to the US. No, they are not the advance party of
President Arroyo. Neither are they alumni of the losing
team in yesterday’s first game of the NCAA championship
finals between De La Salle University and Ateneo de
Manila University.
Rather, they headed for New York to talk
to their contacts in Wall Street and get a clearer view
of how their investment banking exposures, particularly
to bankrupt Lehman Brothers, will affect their bottom
lines (read: whether they can get their
investments/loans back and how soon, given the
government’s proposed rescue plan for the distressed
American financial market).
It’s not hard to find out who these
bankers are. After all, there are only seven local
commercial banks involved to-date.
Meanwhile, employees of the Philippine
office of Lehman Brothers (read: it goes by a different
name) are naturally antsy, not knowing if they should
bail out now and look for jobs elsewhere or if they
should wait it out in hopes of getting some sort of
separation benefits.
Interestingly, technicians specializing in x-ray,
cardiovascular, respiratory, computed axial tomography
(CT) scan or magnetic resonance ima-ging get the same
pay or higher than nurses who pass the US board exams.
Fact is, the demand for technicians is so high that US
visa processing takes a shorter time than
nurse-applicants.
Right now, it takes nurses applying
under the US government’s HB working visa (read: you
have to show that you are not taking a job away from an
American) between three and five years to process.
That’s because the quota for HB visas are met very
quickly and there are so many new requirements of the
Department of Homeland Security.
Those applying under the E2 (read: those
sponsored by an American hospital) take up to two years
because visas are also extended to the applicants’
families.
Door-to-bank remittance has significantly eaten into the
door-to-door courier business. In part, this is because
door-to-bank is now competitively priced and safer.
You see, banks have been very
aggressively looking for clients with large daily
deposits that are withdrawn the same day. If the client
is based in countries where the bank does not have a
strong branch network, the bank ties up with the client
to service overseas Filipino workers (OFW) through its
local branching network and other distribution networks
such as pawnshops.
This way, the bank has another access to
foreign currencies.
If the client is based in the
Philippines, the bank either charges a larger fee per
transaction or stops processing the client’s
deposits/withdrawals all together.
Of course, the banks can always use the
Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). You see, they can
always red-flag such clients for the Anti-Money
Laundering Council, which holds office at the BSP
compound.
Despite such gains, however,
door-to-bank operations cannot entirely replace
door-to-door service. For one, illegal workers do not
have the necessary working documents required by banks
offering remittance services. Also, some OFW
beneficiaries just prefer to have their money delivered
to their homes. |
