Filipinos in Saudi Arabia to have own bank by September 2017

Filipinos working in Saudi Arabia will have their own bank by September next year, according to Finance Secretary Carlos G Dominguez III.

State-run LandBank will acquire Philippine Postal Savings Bank and transform it into OFW Bank, which would be 30-percent owned by overseas Filipino workers, it was reported.

LandBank president Alex Buenaventura said the bank’s Saudi unit will be opened in Riyadh because 40 percent of Filipinos based in the Kingdomlive in the Saudi capital.

He was quoted as saying that the Riyadh unit will initially offer financial education and investment



counseling services to OFWs.

There are more than 800,000 Filipinos residing in Saudi Arabia.

Buenaventura added that it would take eight months to convert the Postal Bank into a LandBank subsidiary.

To complete the acquisition, LandBank will seek clearances from the Governance Commission for Government Owned and Controlled Corporations (GCG) and the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC).

The government bank also needs approval from the Monetary Board, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for the OFW bank to be operational by Sept. 1, 2017.