PHL financial institutions’ trust assets grow to P7.4 trillion in 2024
ASSETS under management (AUMs) of Philippine financial institutions grew by 18.6% to P7.372 trillion in 2024 from P6.215 trillion in 2023, driven by nonbanks as several lenders spun off their trust operations, a report showed.
A report by Regis Partners, Inc. showed that the trust assets of banks and nonbanks also went up by 2.3% quarter on quarter.
“We continue to maintain that, given the size of the domestic AUMs, the Philippine equity market could easily be supported by a shift in AUMs back into local equities. Every 100-basis-point (bp) reallocation into the stock market would be $1.2 billion, in a market turning over barely $100 million a day,” Regis Partners Managing Director and Research Chief Strategist Rafael P. Garchitorena said in a research note on Tuesday.
Broken down, AUMs held within Philippine banks climbed by 6% year on year to P4.451 trillion, making up bulk of the end-2024 total.
Meanwhile, trust assets held by nonbanks surged by 44% to P2.921 trillion.
“This was partly due to two banks — RCBC (Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.) and UnionBank (Union Bank of the Philippines, Inc.) — that spun off their AUMs into “stand-alone trust” vehicles. Those two alone combined for about P300 billion or a third of the growth in nonbank AUMs,” Regis Partners said.
“We also saw a roughly P200-billion growth in AUMs of Sun Life (Sun Life of Canada (Philippines), Inc.), as the new rules allowed the assets of the insurance company to be managed by the trust entity.”
BDO Unibank, Inc. booked consolidated AUMs worth P2.305 trillion last year to top the list, up 15.8% year on year. The parent bank’s AUMs increased by 19.4% to P1.668 trillion, while its subsidiary BDO Private Bank Inc.’s trust assets rose by 7.5% to P638 billion.
This was followed by Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), whose assets under management jumped by 25.2% to P1.53 trillion last year, driven by BPI Wealth’s “aggressive push.”
Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. (Metrobank) had the third-largest total AUMs at P581 billion, up by 16.8% annually.
“Other big movers include Security Bank Corp., which saw AUMs surge by 41.9% to P154 billion, and RCBC, whose AUMs were up 25% year on year to P195 billion,” Regis Partners added.
ATR Asset Management Group (ATRAM Group) also saw its trust assets rise by 15.8% year on year to P363 billion in 2024.
“This does not yet include the recently announced merger between ATRAM and Union Bank Trust. Based on the 2024 numbers, the combined entity would manage about P464 billion, closing the distance to Metrobank’s size,” it said.
Meanwhile, financial institutions’ average net fee incomes as a share of AUMs mostly went down last year, Regis Partners added.
“This to us is consistent with anecdotes that the fastest growing products in 2024 were either fixed income or money market, or foreign exchange-traded funds whose fees are shared with the white-labeled foreign asset manager.” — A.M.C. Sy
