Metrobank’s Fabian Dee is new BancNet president

MANILA, Philippines — Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co. president and chief executive officer Fabian Dee has been elected as president of electronic banking consortium BancNet Inc., succeeding retiring Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) president and CEO Cezar Consing.

Members of BancNet’s board of directors also reelected BDO UniBank Inc. president and chief executive officer Nestor Tan as chairman of the electronic banking consortium.

Dee, a seasoned banker, became president of Metrobank in 2012. Before that, he headed the bank’s National Branch Banking Sector, Account Management Group and Marketing Center. He also served as chairman and director of Metrobank Card Corp. and Metro Remittance Singapore Pte Ltd.

Dee, who holds a degree in management engineering from the Ateneo de Manila University, also served as chairman of LGU Guarantee Corp. and SMBC Metro Investment Corp.

Consing, in his address to the stockholders, underscored BancNet’s resiliency and reliability during the pandemic as the network’s most notable achievement.

“We activated our business continuity plans to enable us to work safely and continuously, cope with the expected volume surge and manage our operations at a time when people needed our service the most. We knew that it was a time when we could not afford to be unavailable,” Consing said.

Consing, who served as president and CEO of the Ayala-led bank for eight years and president of BancNet for three years, said the company’s strong operating and financial results enabled it to reduce its unit cost per transaction while maintaining a high switch availability rate of 99.98 percent.

Consing also highlighted the world-class infrastructure for real-time payments that BancNet built in partnership with Mastercard using the state-of-the art Vocalink technology.

Others elected as new BancNet directors for 2021-2022 were HSBC CEO Henry Bremridge, Citibank director and head of operations and technology Manish Chawla, Veterans Bank president and chief operating officer Renato Claravall, Development Bank of the Philippines president and CEO Emmanuel Herbosa, Philtrust Bank president Jaime Laya, BPI president and CEO Jose Teodoro Limcaoco, Philippine Bank of Communications COO John Howard Medina, Philippine National Bank president and CEO Jose Arnulfo Veloso, as well as Security Bank president and CEO Sanjiv Vohra.

Aside from BDO’s Tan, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. president and CEO Eugene Acevedo, UnionBank president and CEO Edwin Bautista, Land Bank of the Philippines president and CEO Cecillia Borromeo, and China Bank president and CEO William Whang were reelected to the board of directors of BancNet.

PNB’s Veloso was elected treasurer of the electronic banking consortium.

BancNet’s board also appointed Aristeo Zafra as CEO and Elmarie Reyes as deputy CEO until June 30. Reyes would then become CEO effective July 1. Marie Fe Liza Jayme is company assistant treasurer and Agnes Maranan is corporate secretary.

BancNet, the country’s single ATM switch operator, is a multi-bank, multi-channel electronic payments network that enables its members’ customers to transact not only at ATMs, but also at point-of-sale terminals, internet and mobile phones.