Maya announces first profitable quarter

The digital bank affiliate of PLDT [TEL 1280.00 unch] [link], Maya, released a statement claiming to have achieved profitability in Q1 of this year. While Maya declined to provide specifics on its net income, it revealed that its loan disbursements in Q1 reached almost P28 billion, which raised its cumulative disbursements to P120 billion. Maya’s deposits reached P43.6 billion, making it the largest digital bank by deposits. In the statement, Maya said that it is going to expand its credit portfolio and introduce consumer credit products like credit cards.

MB bottom-line: I’m curious to know what it is about Maya that allows it to be profitable where the other digital banks have struggled. As BusinessWorld reported in February, the digital bank sector lost a combined P7 billion in FY24 between Maya, UnionDigital Bank, GoTyme Bank, Tonik, Unobank, and the Overseas Filipino Bank of LandBank. Maybe it’s just the economies of scale that come from having such a large base of deposits. In the meatspace world, a bank might have to open new physical branches and fill those branches with new staff and equipment to so quickly expand its deposit base, but in the cyberspace world, these things can be done without any of that time-consuming and expensive overhead. So Maya gets all the bank benefits of having more money to lend without all of the bank drawbacks of needing a larger physical footprint to acquire that money. 

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