More than 60 years since it opened its first branch in downtown Cebu City in the early 1950s, financial services company MLhuillier, Inc. has made available its business to potential franchisees.
Michael Lhuillier, MLhuillier president and chief executive officer, in an interview with reporters last week, said this was a step closer to establishing a network of services through the ML Express brand in every municipality in the Philippines.
“I want to be in every municipality in the Philippines. If I am going to do that, it will probably take me another four to five years to complete. With the help of ML Express partners and investors, I think I can do that in half the time,” he said.
The company has more than 2,000 branches all over the country, with plans to establish 200 more within 2017.
With 210 of these spread across Cebu City and province, Lhuillier said the company is already well-entrenched here.
A collateral lending firm by nature, the company put up its first branch in 1952 within the Carbon Market area and opened its second branch in 1965 along Colon Street.
From then on, they have branched to other places in the Visayas and eventually the rest of the country.
The company official did not disclose exactly how much the franchise package was, but said it was “reasonably priced.”
MLhuillier was among more than 70 exhibitors at the Cebu Franchise Expo recently held in SM City Cebu over the weekend.
Lhuillier said the package will include domestic and international money transfers as well as logistics, with plans to eventually integrate more services as the franchise becomes more successful.
“I can’t cover the whole country. If somebody is out there running a successful grocery store, gas station, or pharmacy, and they want to augment what they’re doing by adding our service, then that’s the idea,” he said.