The song and dance for incumbents in Philippines right now is “future-proofing”. Joining the trend of entrenched establishments disrupting themselves before they are disrupted, the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) appoints Lito Villanueva as Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer effective May 1, 2019.

Villanueva is no small fry, known to be a digital finance expert and thought leader across Southeast Asia. He is recognised for his pioneering work, including “sachet banking” initiative with five banks, in which sari-sari stores can serve as cash agents for banking transactions to cater to unbanked and underserved Filipinos. He was the first and only Filipino included in the list of top 100 Asian Fintech Leaders by Next Money.

Lito Villanueva is also known as the founding chairman of the FinTech Alliance.ph, an industry group representing more than a third of the country’s fintechs. He also serves as president of a financial inclusion advocacy group better known as IGNITE, a multi-stakeholder, research-based and data-driven advocacy group aiming to technologically empower underserved Filipinos.

He will take on this new position concurrently with his current role in Yuchengo Group of Companies (YGC) as its Chief Digital Transformation Advisor.

Prior to joining the Yuchengco Group, he was the Managing Director of Voyager Innovations’ FINTQnologies, a FinTech business subsidiary of the PLDT Group. Villanueva’s two-decade career included key roles in international organizations such as Visa, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and International Finance Corporation of the World Bank Group.

Featured image via Kenneth David’s Youtube Channel