Competition in remittance sector leads to better services

The brewing competition on Saipan’s remittance sector is paving the road for better and more efficient services as each of the 10 foreign exchange companies in the CNMI tries to corner a bigger chunk of the Northern Marianas market.

Leading Philippine-based courier company Team LBC Mabuhay is gearing up to increase its market share of the almost 20,000 Filipino workers throughout the CNMI who regularly send a significant chunk of their salary back home.

In its increased effort to position itself as one of the leading remittance centers on the island, Team LBC has launched a unique service that allows the completion of money transfer transactions in as short as 15 seconds.

Called Bilis Padala, the transaction is coursed through the Internet to the company’s office in San Francisco, California which transmits the data to Team LBC’s main office in the Philippines.

The money is automatically credited to the consignee’s account in as short a period as 15 seconds, said LBC Mabuhay Saipan team leader Ricardo R. Sumayao in an interview.

“We are able to make this possible because we have the LBC Bank in the Philippines, which is a member of the Megalink that is also hooked up to other automated teller systems in the Philippines,” said Mr. Sumayao.

This allows holders of the Bilis Padala cards to withdraw from over 3,000 ATMs connected with Megalink, Bancnet and Expressnet throughout the Philippines.

The Bilis Padala service has been offered to thousands of Filipinos in the mainland U.S. since two years back, according to Mr. Sumayao. It is also being enjoyed by overseas Filipinos in Italy, Hong Kong, Spain among others.

He said Team LBC has over 40 branches in the mainland U.S. where there are big concentrations of Filipinos like California, Seattle, New Jersey and Nevada, as well as in Vancouver, Canada.

The company started offering the same service to the Filipino community on Saipan since April this year, apparently prompted by the increasing number of remittance companies here which heats up the competition.

Mr. Sumayao said the service was launched here to primarily intensify Team LBC’s efforts to increase its market share in the Northern Marianas, the bigger chunk of which is being held by Pinoy Express and PNB Corporation.

According to him, they have witnessed a sharp increase in the number of customers since the service was launched on Saipan in April this year.

Customers can apply for an ATM card and a Personal Identification Number code under the Bilis Padala service even if they are yet to make remittance transactions, and Mr. Sumayao said they can apply for as much as three cards.

He pointed out that added value to remittance services are fast becoming a necessity for companies in the Northern Marianas primarily because of the healthy competition in the foreign exchange sector.

Workers from the Philippines remain the largest market in the local money transfer industry with seven of the 10 licensed remittance companies in the CNMI exclusively catering to the Filipino community.

In the first quarter of 2000, the commerce department noted an increase in the dollar remittances of Filipino workers at $11.215 million from the previous year of the same period’s $10.989 million.