THE good news is BDO Unibank, Inc. and its two subsidiaries brought home major accolades from Asian Banking and Finance (ABF), a business publication in Singapore, for exemplifying banking excellence.
These awards are:
- BDO Unibank, Domestic Cash Management Bank of the Year-Philippines Award, ABF Wholesale Banking Awards;
-BDO Capital & Investment Corporation, Corporate and Investment Bank of the Year-Philippines Award and Green Deal of the Year Award, ABF Corporate & Investment Banking Awards; and
-BDO Private Bank, Wealth Management Platform of the Year-Philippines Award, ABF Retail Banking Awards.
The Singapore-based publication recognized more than a hundred banks from 30 countries.
Publisher Tim Charlton said: “As we have seen in this year’s winners, banks were still able to navigate and up their game even during the pandemic. We are looking forward to seeing how they will continue to provide the best service to clients in spite of these very difficult times.”
For the third straight year, ABF awarded BDO Unibank with the Domestic Cash Management Bank of the Year-Philippines for its “ingenuity in applying digital and practical solutions to provide a suite of convenient cash management solutions” for its clients.
The publication underscored the bank’s efforts in giving clients greater access to cash through its expansive network of branches and ATMs.
In 2019, BDO enabled over P7 trillion worth of transactions from P5.8 trillion in the previous year. It also launched the Corporate Cash Deposit Machine (CCDM) where clients can deposit cash and update their accounts in real-time.
And now, for the bad news.
Scores of clients and bank depositors are furious and disappointed at BDO for its failure to counter the hacking attacks by cybercriminals led by one Mark D. Nagoyo (obviously a fake name).
Hackers successfully stole amounts ranging from P25,000 to P100,000 from depositors in cyberspace attacks that started on November 29, 2021 and presumably continues until today. These funds were transferred from BDO accounts to multiple accounts in UnionBank, and were later reportedly used to buy Bitcoin, which is a convenient way to siphon stolen money and send it to safe havens abroad.
More and more scam victims have gravitated to Facebook to air their grievances and denounce Banco de Oro Unibank for being remiss in its duty to safeguard deposits.
BDO's inability to immediately control the situation is appalling.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the Senate are both thinking of launching full investigations on what really happened.
Initial probe by the bank over the weekend confirmed that indeed, many depositors considerably lost money due to the serious cybersecurity breach in the country's biggest bank.
Tessie Sy, chairperson of BDO, has assured the affected depositors that their lost deposits will be returned, although this assurance did very little to assuage their anger. She also urged all depositors to change their passwords, something several depositors said they had a hard time doing because the BDO server was not responding well.
It is too unlucky for them to be suffering this unwelcome occurrence especially now that they need the money for their Christmas shopping.
BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno has assured that they are coordinating and working with the two banks to get to the bottom of this newest banking scandal.
As expected, $:BDO which closed last Friday, Dec. 10 at P123.50 for a 1.12 percent decrease or -1.40 shed some more centavos at the opening of the market today, Monday, Dec. 13.
$:BDO opened at 121.20, pruning P1 or 0.81% and was trading at 122.70 as we write this on Monday morning.