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By Likha C. Cuevas-Miel Reporter
The country’s largest
Filipino-owned nonbank remittance firm said the volume of its
business jumped at end-November on combined contributions from
existing markets and its remittance centers in new geographical
locations.
iRremit told the Philippine Stock
Exchange it registered a 37-percent growth to $683 million for the
first eleven months this year over a year ago owing to the
35-percent increase in the number of its transactions to 1.677
million during the comparable periods.
The remittance company said the
North American market registered the biggest growth at 37 percent
while the Asia Pacific region grew by 30 percent. Bangko Sentral ng
Pilipinas data also showed that funds coursed through iRemit
accounted for 5.2 percent, or $613 million of the total
$11.87-billion remittances that entered the Philippines during the
11-month period.
Harris Jacildo, iRemit president
and chief operating officer, said the increase in remittance volume
going through the company was due to the growth in its existing
markets and contribution of its new remittance centers in the
Marshall Islands, Austria and Malaysia.
Jacildo said iRemit’s
partnerships in areas with a big Filipino population such as North
America, Europe and Asia-Pacific helped increase its transactions
and volume of business.
Last month, the company opened a
new branch in Australia and Marshall Islands, which expanded its
market reach in the Southern Hemisphere. The new branch in Australia
is located in Liverpool, New South Wales, which started servicing
the Filipino communities within the surrounding suburbs of Sydney on
December 15. Liverpool has the second biggest concentration of
Filipinos, next to Blacktown.
To date, iRemit has 370 outlets,
associates and agents worldwide with around 2,500 payout stations in
the Philippines. The financial services firm is a unit of the Tiu
Group of Companies that include listed firm TKC Steel Corp.,
Sterling Bank of Asia, the Discovery hotel chain, the Mansions Group
of serviced apartments and Kent Vinyl Tiles.
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