# Fun with Banks



## Manitoba (Jun 25, 2014)

I will not mention the name of the bank, but I was going to receive a international wire transfer so I went into the local branch and asked about the necessary information i.e. SWIFT codes, name of Correspondent bank etc.

All I was given was the information for the Philippine bank not the correspondent bank. I was told that this was all I needed and since it has been a while since I was involved in this sort of transaction just accepted that thinking the procedure ay have changed. (I was wrong about that.)

For those of you unfamiliar with international wire transfer, a transfer not in the banks local currency requires a correspondent bank located in the country of the currency. In this case I needed the Philippine bank information and since the transfer would be in USD a US bank as the correspondent bank.

Numerous phone calls all got me the same answer. All I needed was the Philippine bank information nothing else. Some people refused to talk to me about it saying that that was confidential information and could not be released. 

Several hours searching the web. Just about every major bank worldwide publishes this information on its web site. Since I deal with an international bank, I looked at the web sites for the bank in several other countries, they use one of two US correspondent banks, it appears that only the Canadian one uses a different US bank than the rest of the affiliated banks use.

I would have gone with that but I did read that having the wrong correspondent bank can delay transfers by up to 3 months and since this is a sizable transfer that will become a monthly one I wanted to be 100% sure I was correct.

Finally, I stumbled on the name and email address of the CEO of the Philippine bank, sent him an email and within a couple of hours one of his staff replied with just the SWIFT code for the correspondent bank, not the name and address which I also needed and had asked for. Since it was the bank that the majority of the affiliated banks used, I was comfortable looking up that information and submitting it.

If you have an issue with a bank anywhere here is the link to the web site listing the names, phone numbers and email addresses of the CEO.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas - Banking Supervision

Thanks to the “Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas” or Philippine Central Bank people for providing this helpful information.


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## greenstreak1946 (May 28, 2017)

hey manitoba,

I use to have accounts with BDO. I closed the accounts when I went back to the states. I am coming back so I sent a message to the main office in Makati to see what I would have to do to reopen another account with them. It will be interesting to see what the response will be. Since I have been with them before I am hoping it won't be a nightmare opening more accounts.

art


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## Manitoba (Jun 25, 2014)

My account opening was pretty painless. This is the second stupid thing they did. since so it looks like they sucked me in by appearing to be a real bank with rules that they followed and everything worked. They were just delaying the pain.

It took multiple visits, emails, telephone calls and attempts before my health insurer could charge my credit card for my annual premium. The bank put limits on transactions, don't tell you about them and when you ask raise the limit for the wrong transaction type. three times. But first they blame you for entering in the wrong address (I had correct address, the difference was St. and Street) despite the fact that the report on the failed transaction explicitly stated that the transaction was declined due to it being above the normal limit for the type of transaction attempted.

That triggered a fraud alert because the insurance company made multiple attempts to charge my card. Getting the fraud department to understand that this was an authorized transaction was a huge issue.

Next time I'll just email my new buddy the CEO to get it straightened out after the second attempt by the bank.


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## bigpearl (Jan 24, 2016)

Manitoba said:


> My account opening was pretty painless. This is the second stupid thing they did. since so it looks like they sucked me in by appearing to be a real bank with rules that they followed and everything worked. They were just delaying the pain.
> 
> It took multiple visits, emails, telephone calls and attempts before my health insurer could charge my credit card for my annual premium. The bank put limits on transactions, don't tell you about them and when you ask raise the limit for the wrong transaction type. three times. But first they blame you for entering in the wrong address (I had correct address, the difference was St. and Street) despite the fact that the report on the failed transaction explicitly stated that the transaction was declined due to it being above the normal limit for the type of transaction attempted.
> 
> ...


LMFAO. I/We certainly feel your pain Rick, very different to our home countries. As you and other member know the rubbish we went through to simply open bank accounts in PH. Interesting though we have never had problems sending small or large amounts of money to our accounts there or even through a broker sending bucks to purchase property.

The big banks in PH appear to be "franchises" and while there are guidelines it appears to be totally up to the manager dictating to the staff how their branch will run.
We tried to move our accounts from Manila to SFC,,,,,,,, sorry sir you will have to jump through all the hoops again,,,,,,,,,,,,, our accounts are still in Manila and will probably stay there. Their loss. Will investigate other thinking banks in April/May that can offer descent internet banking, not holding my breath though.
Unfortunately we have to play the game.

Cheers, Steve.


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## DonAndAbby (Jan 7, 2013)

Manitoba said:


> I will not mention the name of the bank, but I was going to receive a international wire transfer so I went into the local branch and asked about the necessary information i.e. SWIFT codes, name of Correspondent bank etc.
> 
> All I was given was the information for the Philippine bank not the correspondent bank. I was told that this was all I needed and since it has been a while since I was involved in this sort of transaction just accepted that thinking the procedure ay have changed. (I was wrong about that.)
> 
> ...


If I am following you correctly, you want to wire transfer Canadian dollars to your Philippine peso account?

First, why not open a Canadian dollar account here? The transfer is then straightforward bank to bank, I believe, and then you control what rate you will exchange at.

Secondly, why use wire transfer? Generally speaking, that is the most expensive way to move money.


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## Manitoba (Jun 25, 2014)

DonAndAbby said:


> If I am following you correctly, you want to wire transfer Canadian dollars to your Philippine peso account?
> 
> First, why not open a Canadian dollar account here? The transfer is then straightforward bank to bank, I believe, and then you control what rate you will exchange at.
> 
> Secondly, why use wire transfer? Generally speaking, that is the most expensive way to move money.


USD to a USD account.

The amount is my salary from ADB job, they control the sending method.

Moving within my international bank is easy. I have global service and can move funds from Canada to Philippines to my expat account in the UK as easily as moving between my chequing and savings accounts within one country. If I change currencies I can simply move money from my USD account in Canada to my peso account here and the bank makes the exchange seamlessly. 

No matter which site I log into I can see the balances in the other accounts, just need to be in that country site to see details of accounts or initiate transfers from those accounts..

I specifically chose my international bank because of this service. 

To move to a different bank is a wire transfer. (Unless I am moving from $CDN from a Canadian bank to another but that is a whole different story.)

It is only the Philippine bank that has made a big secret about what the required codes are for making inbound USD wire transfers. Why I have no idea but for some reason what I could find out for about a dozen different banks, most of which I do not have accounts with, took several days to get from my Philippine bank and I was even told that in the entire world of SWIFT transfers the Philippines were unique.

I agreed, everyone else knows the rules and is more than willing to tell you the rules, the Philippine bank did not know the rules and lied about what they were.,


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## Manitoba (Jun 25, 2014)

bigpearl said:


> LMFAO. I/We certainly feel your pain Rick, very different to our home countries......


This is just one example of what is so far my biggest frustration here.

*The Philippines has never developed a customer service mentality. *

Customers are more than willing to wait in long queues for one of two tellers and then when one teller wants to take a break, the customers just quietly accept that their wait had doubled when with a customer service mentality, the bank would be opening more tellers. Same at grocery stores. It is not uncommon to see more people waiting for one or two cashiers than there are in the rest of the store. 

Ask a sales clerk about something and if they don’t know exactly where it is they will say sorry sir, out of stock or we don’t carry that. I have gotten this when the item in question is on the wall right behind them.

No one wants to lose face and admit that they do not know the rules, so they make them up as they go. Since they never want to be criticized by a manager later for not following the rules, they make up more and more restrictive rules.

I could go on but as long as the average Philipino is willing to accept these low standards of customer service, it will continue.


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## DonAndAbby (Jan 7, 2013)

Manitoba said:


> USD to a USD account.
> 
> The amount is my salary from ADB job, they control the sending method.
> 
> ...


I see. Strange that it is so problematic. I can wire transfer from my U.S. Chase Bank account to my Philippines BPI dollar account without anything special. BPI just gave me the Swift code and that was it.


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## Manitoba (Jun 25, 2014)

Perhaps because Chase is also serving as the corresponding bank? IDK, just guessing.

When I worked for US companies on USAID projects in Haiti and Afghanistan I had to provide correspondent bank information to get paid USD into my Canadian USD accounts even though the company accounts were with US banks.


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## hogrider (May 25, 2010)

In the past year I have made several transfers from overseas, Dubai in fact, to my account here in Philippines, totalling over P10M. Prior to that, I have made many transfers here to pay for the purchase of land and the construction of my house, to different accounts. 
I have never had to provide any info other than the Bank name, branch, Account name, account number and Swift Code. 
All funds arrive here and show in my account within a couple of days.
I closely monitor the published exchange rates and give the signal to carry out the transfer at the optimum rate. That rate is then locked in. Getting the best rate usually means avoiding weekends.


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