State-owned Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP) is stepping up its efforts to promote financial inclusion in the countryside with the distribution of DBP prepaid cards to farmers and fishermen in Cebu province, a top official said.
DBP president and chief executive officer Cecilia C. Borromeo said that the bank’s partnership with the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) would facilitate timely and convenient disbursement of indemnity claims of farmers and fishermen whose farms are insured by the PCIC.
“DBP is proud to partner with the PCIC for this arrangement aimed at promoting financial inclusion to beneficiary farmers and fisherfolks. This is in support of the National Government’s goal to bring more unbanked Filipinos into the financial mainstream,” Borromeo said.
PCIC is a government-owned-and-controlled corporation that administers the government’s agricultural insurance program. It is an attached agency of the Department of Agriculture that provides insurance protection to farmers against losses arising from natural calamities, pest infestations, and plant diseases.
Borromeo said that DBP and the PCIC-Region VII recently awarded the prepaid cards in separate occasions to five farmers in Cebu City and 88 beneficiaries in the municipality of Ronda, Cebu.
She said farmers and fishermen no longer have to go to a bank to encash their checks as indemnity claims are credited to the DBP prepaid cards which the beneficiaries can use in all ATMs nationwide or through Point-of-Sale (POS) terminals.
“The arrangement will not only benefit farmers and fishermen but also benefit the PCIC in terms of reduced costs of purchasing corporate checks, while enabling faster and easier disbursements as crediting of the proceeds can be done via payment instruction through DBP,” Borromeo said.
DBP is also looking to replicate the same arrangement with PCIC in other regions of the country, Borromeo said, adding: “we hope to partner with PCIC in other areas so that we can reach out to more farmers and fisherfolk in the countryside…”