Homegrown company MLhuillier Financial Services, Inc. (MFSI) will focus their firm’s expansion next year on neighborhood branches.
They will open at least 50 new branches next year and their thrust will be more of the smaller community-based branches, said Arne Jude S. Millares, MFSI general manager for VisMin area, in an interview yesterday.
This will address the company’s need to make its services conveniently available to their target customers.
The branches can measure about 20 square meters to 25 square meters and will be manned by two employees to facilitate services including ML Kwarta Padala, Quick Cash Loans and the newly introduced affordable personal insurance products and the added services like bills payment.
“We want to be closer to the customers. Through the community-based branches, they can simply walk to our branches from their homes nearby and do the transactions,” he said.
As of today, there are about 1,800 MLuillier branches nationwide, 968 are in Visayas and Mindanao areas.
“We will soon hit 1,000 branches maybe by the middle of January next year. By end of 2015, we shall have reached 1,100 branches in Visayas and Mindanao. A lot of these additional branches will be our community-based shop models,” he said.
The company is investing about P300,000 for every community-based outlet.
Millares said that the kwarta padala and quick cash loans remain the top services availed by Filipinos that is why they are expanding more to make their services more accessible.
The company have more than 100 partner institutions in 250 countries.
“We get a lot of kwarta padala transactions from Filipinos working abroad and then sending money to their families here,” he said.
They are also promoting their affordable insurance products, said Remilda Cedro, MFSI division head for insurance.
“The ML Family Protect Plus is only P99 a year with a coverage of P30,000 for the principal, P15,000 for the spouse and P10,000 for the four children. This product provides personal accident, fire and cash assistance coverage to the family,” said Cedro.
Another product is the ML Pinoy Protect Plus for only P50 a year that covers personal accident, educational assistance and cash assistance for the insured person.