By Tom Noda
BPI Family Savings Bank, the thrift unit of Ayala-owned Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), unveiled new features of its online shop BPILoans.com, making the site to function like a search engine while maintaining users on the same site.
The website’s latest features were introduced as the country’s biggest thrift bank uploaded in the site a high volume of content relating to vehicle brands, property options, and business franchising companies, among others.
Jose Teodoro Limcaoco, president of BPI Family Savings Bank, said bpiloans.com provides rich information about the bank’s three main products — Auto Loan, Housing Loan, and Ka-Negosyo.
He said the site also features a “Loan Calculator” that will help compute one’s income and assess if a person’s resources are adequate to make a purchase.
For BPI’s Auto Loan product, the site has a gallery of vehicle brands with corresponding line up of features and prices that can compare and match according to a person’s needs and lifestyle.
Under Housing Loan, the site contains over 100,000 property options available in its real estate directory composed of newly developed and still being developed condos, properties being sold by private individuals (secondary market), including acquired properties of BPI.
As for the Ka-Negosyo product offering, the new site has a ?Franchise Finder? feature which helps narrow the search for possible brands and companies that one can franchise.
“It’s about being wiser about financial decisions. For example every house rent you pay or transport fare you spend just disappears forever. You can translate that into a house amortization or vehicle amortization,” Limcaoco said. “It should be investment rather than expense.”
According to BPI’s vice president and division head for product marketing Ramon Altamirano, more Filipinos still find banks to be intimidating especially when it comes to making loans. He believes bpiloans.com can change the situation.
“With bpiloans.com, you don’t have to show up in the bank or consult with other people just to know if you can make a loan or not. It’s all there in website,” Altamirano said.
He noted, however, that BPI’s loan products aren’t limited to what’s listed on bpiloans.com. “Maybe we can’t place everything in the website, but we can finance anything,” Altamirano said.
