Union Bank of the Philippines combines Red Hat’s hybrid cloud capability with AWS to increase agility and improve user experience

Singapore and Philippines – 24 October 2023 – Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Philippines’ UnionBank is using Red Hat OpenShift Service on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to accelerate the migration of mission-critical workloads from on-premises environments to AWS, the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. Using the agility of the cloud to scale its workloads on demand, UnionBank can launch innovative financial services, like digital wallets, artificial intelligence-powered financial assistants, and mobile payment apps faster compared to using on-premises environments.

Southeast Asia’s digital economy was worth an estimated $200bn in 2022, and is backed by strong macro factors, including 460 million digital consumers, and high internet penetration. Yet, half the population remains unbanked with no access to financial products, and a further 18% are underbanked – lacking access to anything other than a bank account. This presents opportunities for the financial services industry to provide millions of Filipinos with access to digital financial services, including bank transfers and money withdrawals, even in very remote areas, with financial services, using digital technology and data. 

UnionBank, which operates in one of the world’s most complex yet fastest growing regions for financial services, is pushing digital banking efforts forward with Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS offers the foundation for building cloud-native applications on a Kubernetes framework. With Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, organizations like UnionBank can use the wide range of AWS compute, database, analytics, machine learning (ML), networking, mobile, and other services to build security-focused and scalable applications faster. UnionBank uses Amazon API Gateway and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) to build new mobile banking products with microservices that support any application architecture, regardless of scale, load, or complexity. For example, the bank integrated electronic “Know Your Customer” (eKYC) capabilities into its mobile app, allowing customers to submit documents digitally to open a bank account instead of via post or by visiting a physical branch.

UnionBank’s continued drive for digital transformation includes using Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS for a consistent and unified experience across its public and private cloud environments. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS allows the bank to seamlessly shift workloads to the cloud as business needs evolve. The service has helped simplify operations at UnionBank so that teams can act faster as well as develop apps with more agility and accuracy, reducing the average application deployment time by 95 percent. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS also frees up the team’s bandwidth away from managing day-to-day infrastructure and gives them greater flexibility to focus on long term innovation. This can include developing microfinance and microsavings applications, which provide small-scale financial services to individuals who may not have access to traditional banking services. 

Through a six week immersive consulting engagement with Red Hat’s Open Innovation Lab, UnionBank  identified application development process efficiencies and increased collaboration between its product, developer, and operations teams. This has helped streamline internal processes, saving development time, and promoted stronger DevOps practices such as open ways of working and agile workflow. As a result, teams can efficiently and collectively deliver more personalized products meeting customer needs for financial management, including payments, lending, investing, and insurance.

Recognizing the bank’s forward-thinking digital technology approach, UnionBank has won a Red Hat APAC Innovation Award 2023 in the Digital Transformation and Cloud-Native Development categories. UnionBank was the inaugural winner of this award in the Philippines, and was commended for paving the way for delivering online, real-time business solutions to meet customers’ changing and diverse needs in the country. 

Supporting Quotes

Dennis D. Omila, Chief Technology and Operations Officer, Union Bank of the Philippines 

“Growth of the Philippines economy is projected to bounce back by year-end to 5.3 percent and to 6 percent in 2024. With this encouraging news comes a compelling challenge to all Philippine banks to continue building agile and tailored products catering to evolving customers. Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS allows our teams greater autonomy and flexibility to deliver latest features and updates to meet market needs. The integration between Red Hat and AWS means we can better focus on delivering products that match our goal to Tech Up Pilipinas – or, enabling customers to live their best lives through the latest financial innovations.”

Prem Pavan, Vice President and General Manager, Southeast Asia and Korea, Red Hat

“60 million people in Southeast Asia became online consumers for the first time during Covid. This represents significant digital commerce opportunities for businesses to tap into, all underpinned by financial services. UnionBank, a digital-forward bank that is rapidly scaling and innovating its products to meet the needs of digital-native customers and emerging business cases, is a perfect example of that. Using Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS, organizations like UnionBank can drive speed to market, economies of scale on cost, and greater flexibility to focus on digital transformation.” 

Jerry Bongco, Country Manager, Philippines, Amazon Web Services

“Financial institutions across Southeast Asia are using the transformative power of cloud technology to rapidly deliver innovative new services that empower more people and drive prosperity. AWS works with Red Hat to help organizations like UnionBank increase operational efficiency, refocus on innovation, and quickly build, deploy, and scale applications. This initiative clearly demonstrates how cloud technology is a catalyst for innovation and resilience in a complex and growing region.”