PhilippinesBankingScale · $100K
UnionBank of the Philippines

The bank that led Philippine digital banking gets its next first: agentic service across cards, retail, and UnionDigital

UnionBank bought Citi's consumer scale and built UnionDigital's speed; an agentic frontline reconciles both — premium card servicing and digital-native onboarding from one governed conversation layer.

Entry use case
Credit-card servicing with in-conversation actions
Expected outcome
Lower cost per card-servicing contact and improved post-migration service perception
Recommended next step
Proof-of-value proposal to consumer-banking leadership: two card-servicing intents automated end-to-end, measured on cost per contact and repeat-call rate.
What we understand

UnionBank of the Philippines's operating reality

UnionBank acquired Citi's Philippine consumer banking business, adding a large premium credit-card portfolio, and operates UnionDigital as its digital-bank arm.

Public fact

The bank has cultivated the Philippines' most prominent tech-forward banking brand, with early moves in blockchain, cloud, and AI publicly showcased by its leadership.

Public fact

Large systems migrations of acquired portfolios generated publicly visible customer friction — service perception is a live battleground.

Public fact

Premium ex-Citi cardholders benchmark service against global standards; queues and repeat calls erode the acquired franchise's value.

Reasoned inference

UnionDigital's growth depends on low-cost onboarding and servicing that human-heavy models cannot deliver.

Reasoned inference

Validate with the account team before outreach: Post-migration servicing pain points and repeat-contact hotspots · Cloud posture and existing conversational-AI vendors · UnionDigital onboarding funnel metrics and drop-off points

Build vs buy

Why we have a right to win here

Partner-led target

Technically capable but needs industry workflows, integration, acceleration, or managed operations

Evidence: The Philippines' most tech-forward bank has real engineering and unusual API maturity, but its pattern is early adoption of partner platforms it can showcase — partner-led with a co-innovation narrative fits both its capability and its brand.

Why they won't build the full stack: Post-Citi-migration priorities are stability and service perception; an in-house conversational-AI infrastructure build would repeat the migration lesson, while a governed partner platform lets the innovation brand ship a visible first quickly and safely.

What management is signalling

Post-acquisition results commentary has centered on integrating the Citi consumer book and restoring service metrics after publicly visible migration friction.

Inferencerecent investor communications (validate) · 2025–2026

GTM implication: Pitch card-servicing automation as migration repair the market can see — in complaint volumes, repeat-call rates, and CSAT — not as a novelty project.

What already exists (don't pitch this)
  • UnionBank Online app
  • UnionDigital digital bank
  • Existing chatbot deflection on digital channels
What customers still can't do end-to-end (pitch this)
  • →In-conversation card servicing actions (limits, installments, disputes)
  • →Live KYC document validation in onboarding
  • →BSP-conduct-evidenced collections coverage
  • →Post-migration repeat-contact suppression
Opportunity map

Where agentic communications pays off first

WorkflowWhy it matters hereValueComplexitySpeedChannels
Credit-card servicing & disputes
In-conversation completion of top card intents with proactive dispute status.
The acquired card book is the revenue jewel; servicing quality decides whether it retains its premium behavior.
Friction today: High-volume intents (limits, installments, disputes, waivers) end in queues; repeat contacts follow migrations.
VoiceIn-appViber/WhatsApp
UnionDigital onboarding & activation
Guided conversational onboarding with live document validation and activation nudges.
Digital-bank economics live or die on funnel completion and early activation.
Friction today: KYC document rejections stall silently; status calls land on human desks.
In-appSMSViber/WhatsApp
Early-bucket card & loan collections
BSP-compliant conversational reminders with in-channel payment and complete logs.
Consumer-credit growth needs conduct-clean, full-coverage early outreach.
Friction today: Dialer-based coverage gaps; conduct evidence is sampled, not complete.
VoiceSMSViber/WhatsApp
Watch the change

Credit-card servicing with in-conversation actions: today vs the agentic model

Scenario: An ex-Citi cardholder converts a big purchase to installments by voice at 11pm, gets the terms read from the live card system, and confirms — no queue, no branch.
Today
same interaction, two worlds
Agentic layer
Onboarding drop-off
unmeasured leaks
instrumented end-to-end
Platform capability
Cost per contact
$13.50 median assisted
$1.84 median self-service
Benchmark
QA coverage
1–2% sampled
100% scored
Platform capability
Sources & assumptions
  • · Onboarding drop-off: Process design; completion lift measured in pilot
  • · Cost per contact: Gartner customer service cost benchmarks, 2024
  • · QA coverage: Platform capability: every interaction logged and evaluated
  • · Gartner, customer service cost benchmarks (2024): $13.50 median assisted vs $1.84 self-service per contact
  • · McKinsey, digital-first collections research: 20–25% NPL reduction among leaders; up to 40% opex reduction with gen AI
  • · Baymard Institute: ~70% average cart abandonment (meta-analysis)
  • · IAMAI–Kantar via IBEF (2025): 900M+ Indian internet users; 98% consume Indic-language content
  • · LeadSquared and vendor funnel studies: 78% of students choose the first institution to respond (directional, vendor data)
  • · HDI / ITSM operator benchmarks: $15–25 per L1 ticket; 40–60% of L1 volume is resets/status (validate per customer)
  • · Conventional-flow wait times and volumes are typical operator patterns — assumptions to replace with the customer's own baseline
  • · Agentic-flow behaviors (context retention, 100% logging, in-line policy checks) are platform capabilities, not projections
Recommended solution

One integrated stack, opinionated for this account

Channels · Tilicho Labs
VoiceIn-appViber/WhatsAppSMS

Voice & channel orchestration, telephony, conversational execution, session/state, routing, integration build. Capability coverage validated during implementation.

Intelligence · Google Cloud
Gemini reasoningEnterprise groundingWorkflow agentsMulti-agent orchestrationGoverned actionsEvaluation & analytics
Systems · UnionBank of the Philippines
Card managementDispute workflowCRMeKYC stackCore (digital)Collections platformPayments

API access to these systems is the critical-path dependency.

Trust & languages
Filipino/TagalogEnglish

Identity-bound sessions, policy-bounded actions, 100% audit logging, human approvals at defined points, in-tenant intelligence.

Business case

The economics, with your numbers

Addressable monthly interactions1.5M
Seller assumption — replace in discovery
Current cost per interaction ($)$1.1
Industry benchmark scale — validate
Automation / assistance rate (%)55%
Seller assumption — pilot proves this
$1.7M
Current operating cost / mo
$7.4M
Modelled gross benefit / yr
0.2 mo
Payback on Scale
211%
3-yr ROI (modelled)
Automated/assisted interactions per month825K
Modelled AI run-cost per month (usage + cloud, system estimate)$289K
New monthly operating cost$1.0M

All figures are modelling estimates from the labeled inputs above — nothing here is customer-provided yet. The pilot's first job is replacing these assumptions with UnionBank of the Philippines's measured baseline. Package price covers implementation only; recurring usage billed separately.

Recommended package

Scale — $100K implementation

Scale · $100K · A multi-channel production deployment10–14 weeks to production across priority workflows

Why this package for UnionBank of the Philippines: Card servicing plus digital onboarding across the main bank and UnionDigital is a two-to-three-workflow, multi-channel deployment befitting the innovation brand.

Included
  • 4–6 channels
  • 2–3 priority workflows
  • Multiple enterprise integrations
  • API credential & security setup
  • Advanced orchestration
  • Multilingual support
  • Agent Assist / human escalation
  • Production analytics
  • Expansion roadmap
Not included
  • ✕Usage & consumption (billed separately)
  • ✕Enterprise-wide governance build-out
  • ✕Multi-BU rollout
Recurring costs (separate from the package)

Packages cover implementation and integration only. Recurring costs are billed separately: Tilicho Labs platform usage (~$0.15/call-min indicative, usage only), Google Cloud consumption, telephony/carrier charges, managed operations, and support & optimization. No package includes unlimited usage.

Customer resources required
  • · API access + credentials for: Card management, Dispute workflow, CRM
  • · A named business owner for credit-card servicing with in-conversation actions
  • · Security review counterpart and policy sign-off (Card management scope)
  • · Baseline metrics for the pilot's success thresholds
Executive messages

What to say to whom

CEO

“UnionBank's brand is being first. Agentic banking conversations are the next visible first — and they repair the service perception the migration strained.”

CIO / CTO

“You have the API maturity most banks lack; that turns this from an integration project into a governed-agent deployment your team can showcase.”

COO

“Card-servicing volume from the acquired book is your biggest contact driver; in-conversation actions take the top intents out of the queue permanently.”

Head of Consumer / Cards

“Premium cardholders defect over service, not price. Midnight-capable, instant card servicing is retention for the exact segment you paid Citi for.”

Chief Risk / Compliance Officer

“BSP consumer-protection expectations are met with enforced policy bounds and 100% interaction records — stronger evidence than any sampled QA regime.”

CFO / Procurement

“The business case is cost per card-servicing contact versus current blended cost; the pilot reports it directly alongside CSAT.”

Outreach

Pre-built offer emails for UnionBank of the Philippines

Written from this account's own research — the strategic signal, the capability gap, the entry workflow, and the modelled economics — not a mail-merge template. Pick the moment and the persona, edit anything, then copy or open in your mail client.

Moment in the deal
Cold outreach — no prior conversation
Who it's addressed to
Cares about: The workflow itself and its daily failure modes
Register
Length
Draft — edit freely before sending
Open in mail client

Customer-safe by construction: drafts are composed only from customer-facing fields. Account tier, build-vs-buy classification, priority score, internal routing, and partner-commercial detail are not inputs to the composer, so they cannot appear in a draft. Money figures are always framed as modelled from the customer's own volumes. Read before sending — you own what goes out.

The pursuit

Tier 2 — high-potential incubation

Why this tier

The Philippines' most publicly tech-forward bank — Citi consumer acquisition, UnionDigital, and an innovation brand to defend — receptive buyer with meaningful but mid-scale volumes.

Recommended next step

Proof-of-value proposal to consumer-banking leadership: two card-servicing intents automated end-to-end, measured on cost per contact and repeat-call rate.

Entry: Credit-card servicing with in-conversation actions · Scale package · 10–14 weeks to production across priority workflows. Human fallback throughout; success thresholds agreed before build.

Start the pursuit

Research-based priority-account universe assembled from public information, market scale, communication volume, and solution fit. This is NOT an authoritative list of top Google Cloud customers; existing Google Cloud relationships are noted only where publicly reported. Validate every account with the account team before outreach.