Industry Financial services Company Listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange, Union Bank of the Philippines is a partnership between the Aboitiz Group, Insular Life and Social Security System. UnionBank provides corporate cash management, payment services, foreign exchange and capital markets. Employees About 1,792, excluding employees from International Exchange Bank (iBank) which UnionBank acquired. IT staff 80 Annual IT Budget About 10 percent of annual capital expenditure

Since then, it has not looked back. UnionBank continuously enhances its IT infrastructure to suit the fast-changing business environment, and today prides itself on being tech-savvy and well-managed.

In 2005, UnionBank replaced its 10-year-old mainframe legacy systems to lower the total cost of IT ownership, as well as to achieve greater business agility. For example, the new system enables the bank to launch new products more quickly. Infosys' Finacle core banking software on Sun servers was implemented in over 110 branches nationwide.

On being named a ZDNet Asia Smart50 company, Ceferino Tolentino, chief information officer for UnionBank, said: "It only makes us strive to be even better. This encourages us to raise the bar on our standards and quality of service to be competitive--not only locally, but globally."

Tolentino attributed the bank's IT project successes to having "a good mix of talent" in his IT department. "But what makes them tick is their drive and passion to excel and to provide solutions, even in the most difficult situations," Tolentino noted. "The bottom line is always to meet the goals set by the business in the most efficient way and at the least cost and time."

The chief information officer told ZDNet Asia that the bank will continue to use technology to achieve greater business success. "We are always open to using new technologies as a business enabler, and as a means to be more competitive in the banking industry," Tolentino said.

UnionBank has outlined a strategy which, it believes, will help it achieve its goal of becoming one of the top three banks in the Philippines by 2010, in terms of market capitalization.

Called FOCUS 2010, the strategy identifies five strategic imperatives: financial value, operational excellence, customer franchise, UnionBank brand/experience, and speed of innovation. The bank hopes to accomplish this over the next four years, and achieve its target of 1.5 million retail customers and 3,000 corporate customers by 2010.