September 5, 2025 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — The Financial institution of the Philippine Islands (BPI) is ramping up its use of synthetic intelligence, with plans to launch the primary part of an AI-powered lending platform by December, its high government mentioned.
BPI president and CEO Jose Teodoro Limcaoco mentioned the venture goals to embed AI into the financial institution’s lending processes, utilizing agentic AI to assist deal with mortgage approvals and streamline workflows.
“We’re starting a venture the place we’re going to put our complete lending platform on AI, and hopefully use agentic AI to service a few of the mortgage approvals and mortgage processes. It might be a two-year venture,” Limcaoco mentioned. “However we are going to do it in phases and we hope to get the primary part up by possibly this December.”
The Ayala-led financial institution is eyeing the know-how to hurry up processing and make credit score entry extra environment friendly for purchasers, as lenders face rising stress to digitize operations and improve buyer expertise.
Limcaoco mentioned BPI has been utilizing AI for a few years, even earlier than the present wave of generative AI and enormous language fashions gained traction. Machine studying and sample recognition have lengthy been utilized in customer support and credit score modeling.
Nonetheless, the most recent wave of generative AI and enormous language fashions is opening new alternatives for the 174-year-old financial institution.
“We do have a instrument at the moment that’s being utilized by the crew the place we’re working off a ChatGPT platform. That is the place we ingested all our insurance policies, procedures and merchandise,” Limcaoco mentioned.
“That method, our crew is ready to question our enormous database of inner memos, if you’ll, and get a constant reply that we give to purchasers,” he added.
Past back-end assist, BPI can be piloting what Limcaoco described as an “AI-driven voice field,” which might additional improve the financial institution’s service supply.
The broader push underscores BPI’s dedication to digital transformation because the banking business contends with fast-moving technological change. Conventional gamers like BPI are adapting to maintain tempo with fintech companies and evolving buyer expectations.
For BPI, Limcaoco mentioned the technique is to combine AI step-by-step, making certain reliability and belief because it reshapes inner processes and client-facing platforms.
The Ayala-led financial institution posted a web earnings of P33 billion within the first six months of 2025, 7.8 % larger than the P30.6 billion in the identical interval final yr, pushed by double-digit income development regardless of larger working prices and mortgage loss provisions.
