‘Know your worth, surpass expectations’

MANILA, Philippines — On a typical working day, Maybank Philippines senior vice president and head for global banking Manuel “Mannix” Bosano III starts at 8 a.m. with a dose of caffeine from a nearby coffee shop. He then tries to check his daily, weekly and monthly schedules to see his deliverables.

“Committee meetings normally take up anywhere from 30 to 40 percent of my time, and another 20 to 30 percent for internal discussions with different teams, reviewing, approving and signing documents. The balance is spent meeting/negotiating with clients,” he details as if time is currency.

But he speaks with empathy, especially about his subordinates whom he leads by example. His leadership style is more consultative or collaborative in nature. He normally discusses with his one-downs their overall strategy and direction, and try to solicit feedback. At the end of the meeting, they would agree on the way forward for the group.

“Just by being able to show them that I succeeded in my career, I hopefully am able to guide and motivate them. I think that’s one advantage of rising from the ranks,” says the senior vice president who started as a teller.  

“I was ambitious but I never imagined I would be head of banking. My ambition then was just to have the financial stability, not rank-or role-related. After a year in my first work, I got married. It also helped me motivate myself,” says the Economics graduate from San Beda, the only school that accepted him into college after graduating from Columbia River High School in the US. He was an exchange student during fourth-year high school.

For two and a half years of being a bank teller, Bosano applied for account management, which required staff assistant training. After five years, he landed an assistant manager post in another bank, where he focused on business development. Not someone to settle on annual targets, he would always meet his quota as early as June, impressing his superiors and eventually getting promoted into vice president in less than two years.

 In his 30 years in the industry, he has mastered all the segments, from lending and trade, branch banking to accounts management, credit and marketing, investment and corporate banking, and now, he was tasked to also oversee treasury.

He entered Maybank in 2009 and has never left since. He was invited to join the foreign bank to initially handle the Factoring Unit (receivables discounting) and was eventually asked to also handle corporate banking. According to Bosano, his current role, in layman’s term, “can be described as a ‘coordinator of deals.’ I say this because my primary job is to identify client’s needs and be able to properly match this with the bank products.”

 Several factors have made Bosano stay with the company. “First, it is the people I work with and the camaraderie that has been developed overtime, which helps me overcome work-related challenges.” He was very comfortable with the people, a portion of whom he hired when he joined a decade ago.

 “Second, the opportunities given to me by the bank in helping me develop my management and leadership capabilities,” Bosano said.

Bosano says he has always been grateful to Maybank because he was given the opportunity to grow not only his skillset, but his leadership as well. He believes the bank continues to provide the learning environment to enable individuals to grow.

 He goes on, “there are a lot of leadership programs, trainings programs that I liked participating in. It built my career further, not only in terms of my core competencies but also my personal traits — more on leadership. It’s not too much on the technical side because I think I’m done with that. I’m more on the personal, managerial, and leadership. Maybe that’s just to further polish it.”

 He adds that after years of working with several foreign and local banks, he has observed that “the rigor is quite different” in Maybank. “The underwriting and approval metrics is a bit more stringent. In a foreign bank structure, there is a strong emphasis on meeting certain profitability hurdles as well as trying to meet both local and regional regulatory standards.”

 For Bosano, a good portion of being a leader is handling managerial skills. “From January to November, there’s a lot of managerial matters because that’s day-to-day interaction. I define that as the managerial part — the outlooks, strategies. Leadership is looking ahead right and that’s what I’m doing these past two weeks up to the year-end.”

 For 2019, his team was able to exceed their CASA deposit budget. So, for the past two months, Mannix has been more focused on strategizing for 2020, which means trying to review what happened in the first 10 months of the year, and looking forward.

 While the current year saw a dip in their lending portfolio due to tight pricing, in 2020, Bosano’s team is tasked to recover loan volume, and remain focused in growing CASA deposits.

Bosano at home: ‘I’m not a disciplinarian’

Outside of work, he enjoys driving and traveling with family. A few years back, he was able to afford a muscle car that they use during weekends.

“I found this as a good way of managing stress. Activities with the family normally involve traveling and we would travel once or twice a year (as long as my vacation leave permits) to other countries and try to experience different cultures.

 Every parent encourages his children to work harder to achieve their dreams, but Bosano never imposed to his three children the same uncompromising guise he would to budgets and targets.

 He never encouraged them to follow the same path he took, but listen to their own calling and passion. Nevertheless, his eldest, Katrina Margarita, 28, took up finance and investments.

 “My mom was a disciplinarian. She’s a professor. I am an only child. Imagine, if your mom were a professor, she would be very strict. But I want my kids to be closer to me,” he says, describing their home as a casual and very relaxed one.

 “In our home, we are a bit informal. While there will always be that respect my children will have toward their parents, sometimes we just talk, share jokes, laugh at each other, and try to maintain an open communication.”

 Perhaps, whether at the corporate world or inside the home, Bosano implements his tried-and-tested strategy: a harmonious blend of leadership and management and an unyielding air softened by a kind heart.