Philippines: Financial System Stability Assessment Update

Book excerpt: 1. Banking dominates the Philippine financial system. After a significant consolidation following the Asian financial crisis of the 1990s, the Philippine banking system today (June 2009) comprises 804 deposit-taking institutions, including universal and commercial banks, as well as thrift, rural, and cooperative banks. Their assets total almost P6 trillion, some 75 percent of GDP or about two-thirds of total financial institutions' assets, an increase of almost 60 percent since 2003 (Table 2). Universal and commercial banks-mostly domestic private banks-account for 88 percent of total banking assets, with the ten largest accounting for about two-thirds.2