Brankas publishes first-ever ASEAN Bank Stability Report

Brankas publishes first-ever ASEAN Bank Stability Report, showing 2023 uptime performance from top banks including RCBC and Bank Mandiri

SINGAPORE, January 26, 2024 – Brankas today released the Bank Stability Report 2023 ASEAN, offering valuable insights into the uptime performance of top banks in the Philippines and Indonesia. The report, which includes consumer banks the likes of RCBC, Bank Mandiri, and UnionBank, informs businesses, partners, and end users on the infrastructure reliability of the banks they trust.

“Now that e-payments and digital banking are becoming the norm, constant access to reliable digital banking services is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.” said Todd Schweitzer, CEO and Co-founder of Brankas. “Uptime is a critical metric that impacts trust and stability, and we hope that Brankas’ latest report sheds light on the ASEAN region’s commitment to financial reliability and security.”

Bank availability data for the report was retrieved independently from public sources to determine real-time service reliability for operations including bank statement retrievals, payments, and money transfers. The uptime number is a measure of the percentage of time a bank is available to users for online data and payment transactions.

Key highlights:

• In the Philippines, RCBC led the pack with 98.30% uptime, while UnionBank, with 95.98%, faced challenges with longer downtimes.
• In Indonesia, Bank Mandiri and Permata Bank achieved above 99% uptime, demonstrating overall higher reliability compared to their Philippine counterparts.
• RCBC was the best performer in the Philippines, with 7 months of no downtime.
• Landbank and Metrobank in the Philippines set the standard for proactive communication, while BDO and UnionBank fell short, highlighting the need for improved customer awareness of planned and unplanned disruptions.
• Downtime incidents in Indonesia were relatively short, usually lasting between 30 minutes and 2 hours.
• BCA had the longest downtime at 201.5 hours, equivalent to being offline for 8.4 days in a year.
• Payday periods around the middle and end of the month coincided with more downtimes in the Philippines, indicating infrastructure strain.
• In Indonesia, uptime was significantly better between September and December, suggesting an improvement in infrastructure reliability.
• UnionBank experienced the longest downtime stretch of 20 hours on 20 May 2023.

The report further reveals aggregate downtime by month from all the banks, showing a spike in November and April 2023 from the Philippines and Indonesia respectively.

Brankas recommends that banks maintain at least an uptime of 99%, and provide transparent communication of scheduled downtime at least 5 working days in advance. This is in line with the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) requirement for banks and financial institutions to maintain approximately 99.95% of uptime yearly. Central banks in the ASEAN region are expected to consider meting out punitive measures to banks for extended disruption of banking services in the future.

Download the full Bank Stability Report 2023 ASEAN today.

About Brankas

Brankas is a leading global open finance technology provider. We provide API-based solutions, data and payments solutions for financial service providers (like banks, lenders and e-wallets) and online businesses. Brankas partners with banks to build and manage their open finance infrastructure, producing APIs for real-time payments, identity and data, new account opening, remittances, and more. With Brankas’ secure open banking technology, online businesses, fintech companies and digital banks can use Brankas APIs to create new digital experiences for their users.