PDIC to start paying Export Bank depositors May 22  

State-run Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) said Monday that it would start servicing depositors’ claims of Export and Industry Bank, a month after the beleaguered bank was ordered closed by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. 

 

Postal money orders will be sent to 29,314 valid depositors with balances of P10,000 and below, which account for 61 percent of the shuttered bank’s 48,274 deposit accounts as of end-March 2012. 

 

"This initial batch of deposit insurance payments is for holders of accounts who have no outstanding loans with EIB and who have updated their addresses with the bank in the past year,” the PDIC said in a statement. 

 

“These account holders were not required to file deposit insurance claims," it added.

 

It noted that mailing the money orders for this batch of depositors would be complete by June 1.

 

By June 19–a week earlier than scheduled–PDIC said it would start servicing claims by depositors with account balances between P10,000 and P500,000.

 

PDIC’s deposit insurance fund for servicing claims of depositors of closed banks totaled P72.62 billion as of end-February, up 11.9 percent from P64.91 billion a year earlier, the insurer claimed.

 

There were 31 banks that were closed in 2011, according to PDIC, saying the closures were instrumental in weeding out weak banks from the banking system.

 

Export Bank has more than 50,000 depositors on record, the Bangko Sentral noted last month when it ordered the bank closed and before the deposit accounts were validated by PDIC. Total deposits at that time amounted to over P15 billion. 

 

The bank has 50 branches and 47 automated teller machines (ATMs) nationwide.

 

The Bangko Sentral’s policy-setting Monetary Board ordered Export Bank closed on April 26 after the bank admitted it did not have enough cash to service its maturing deposits worth between P700 million and P800 million.

 

"… [O]n account of its inability to meet its obligations as they become due, insufficient realizable assets to meet its liabilities and its inability to continue in business without involving probable losses to its depositors or creditors," the bank was placed under receivership of PDIC. 

 

The Bangko Sentral cited Republic Act 7653 or the New Central Bank Act of 1993 in moving against Export Bank.

 

In 2010, Export Bank committed to sell its core banking business to Banco de Oro Unibank of retail magnate Henry Sy but the transaction, but Banco de Oro dropped the transaction citing several issues including pending cases against the Export Bank. —VS, GMA News