The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) has tapped Banco de Oro Unibank Inc. (BDO) as fund manager to help grow the health insurer’s monies and ensure its stability for the benefit of its 86 million beneficiaries.
PhilHealth President and CEO Alexander A. Padilla and Ador A. Abrogena, executive vice president of BDO Trust, signed the investment-management agreement at BDO’s headquarters in Makati City.
As local fund manager, BDO will manage P1 billion worth of funds, representing only a small portion of PhilHealth’s investment reserves and ensure that the fund grows so that PhilHealth can continue to provide for the health-insurance benefits of its growing membership base.
The partnership is expected to further maximize the returns that PhilHealth generates from its current investments and pave the way for the attainment of the investment objective of optimizing growth and yield through active investments in the stock market through a disciplined stock-selection process.
“We are very happy that BDO is our first local fund manager,” Padilla said. “We rely a lot not only on our collections of premium for the reimbursement of PhilHealth benefits but also in the investments that we do. So far, we have been performing well in investments but we are limited to fixed government securities, as well as government bonds. Now that we partnered with BDO, we expect bigger returns in equities,” he added.
BDO Trust will manage the investment portfolio based on strict implementing directives stated in the Stock Investment Guidelines provided by PhilHealth. “PhilHealth has a huge responsibility of providing benefits to millions of our countrymen. It is, therefore, very important that we, as fund managers, make sure that we manage this fund with the highest degree of responsibility for the fund to perform its objective of providing universal health coverage for all of us. That is the commitment of BDO,” Abrogena said.
PhilHealth will continue to tap the services of four other locally based fund managers through public bidding by the end of the year.