BDO Unibank Brand Guidelines: Acme Savings, Banco de Oro & the Equitable PCI Merger

A two-branch thrift bank that became Banco de Oro.

BDO Unibank began as Acme Savings Bank, a thrift bank established on 2 January 1968 with just two branches, in the area that later became Metro Manila, English Wikipedia says. In November 1976 Acme was acquired by the SM Group, the retail group founded by Henry Sy, and renamed Banco de Oro Savings and Mortgage Bank. Banco de Oro is Spanish for “bank of gold,” and the initials of that name are the ones the bank carries today.

For its first decades it was a modest institution. Writing in BusinessWorld in December 2019, in the text of a speech given on receiving a management award, the bank’s president described BDO as having started as a savings bank whose business model mainly supported the SM retail businesses. Its licence was then upgraded in quick succession: it became Banco de Oro Commercial Bank in December 1994 and a universal bank in September 1996, according to English Wikipedia, which gives the new name as Banco de Oro Universal Bank, shortened to BDO Unibank. The same column says that in 1997 the bank ranked twentieth in the country by resources.

A run of acquisitions followed. In June 2001 BDO merged with the Philippine subsidiary of Dao Heng Bank, with BDO as the surviving bank, Wikipedia says. In September 2002 The Philippine Star reported that the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas had approved BDO’s purchase of the banking business of First e-Bank, the thrift unit of Metro Pacific, bringing 57 branches and a combined network of more than 180 outlets. BDO also listed its shares in 2002, the 2019 column says. In 2003 it bought the local unit of Banco Santander, which became BDO Private Bank, and in 2005 it bought 66 branches of United Overseas Bank’s Philippine subsidiary, according to Wikipedia.

Equitable PCI and a merger of three banks.

The deal that shaped today’s bank was the merger with Equitable PCI Bank, itself the product of an earlier union of Equitable Bank and PCI Bank. The 2019 BusinessWorld column says BDO decided in late 2003 to pursue the stake in Equitable PCI held by the Social Security System, the pension fund for private-sector workers, and completed the first step of that transaction on 30 December 2003. In August 2005 BDO and SM Investments bought a further block of Equitable PCI shares from the family that had founded the bank, Wikipedia says.

The boards of the two banks agreed to merge on 27 December 2006, and Equitable PCI was delisted on 4 June 2007; the combined bank kept the old Banco de Oro ticker, according to Wikipedia. It was known first as Banco de Oro-EPCI and then as Banco de Oro Unibank, and in 2010 it took the name BDO Unibank, Inc. The column describes the integration as the merging of three institutions at once, because Equitable and PCI had not finished combining their own operations. It says the work took eleven months, with more than 50 branches converted in a single weekend near the end, and was finished by mid-2008.

Buying continued afterwards. The Philippine Star, in a September 2019 report, listed BDO’s purchases of Amex Savings Bank in 2007, GE Money in 2009, the Rural Bank of San Juan in 2012, and Citibank Savings, The Real Bank and the trust business of Deutsche Bank in 2014. In December 2014 the paper reported that BDO had acquired One Network Bank, which it described as the country’s largest rural bank, with branches mostly in Mindanao; BDO said it would run it as a rural-bank subsidiary. The purchase was completed in July 2015, and in 2019, after central-bank authorisation on 2 July, the rural bank was renamed BDO Network Bank, the paper reported.

Symbols, names and everyday banking.

Southeast Asian banks speak to a wide range of customers at once: city professionals and market traders, exporters and farmers, families in the capital and small businesses in provincial towns. Their identities are built to read clearly on a branch sign, a card and a phone screen. Strong symbols and wordmarks are common, often set in deep blues, greens, purples or golds, and many marks carry a symbol with local meaning: Bangkok Bank, for example, has used the royal lotus as its emblem since 1972, according to Thai Wikipedia.

Names often work in more than one language. Many banks pair a name in the local language with an English name or a short set of initials, and some add a Chinese name for business in China; Kasikornbank introduced a logo in Thai, Chinese and English in 2007, English Wikipedia says. Photography of branches, city skylines and everyday customers carries much of the visual message on websites and in campaigns.

Digital channels sit at the centre of the brand. Bank websites give prominent space to everyday banking, loans and mobile apps, such as Bangkok Bank’s Bualuang mBanking and Kasikornbank’s K PLUS, and to QR payments for shops and market stalls. Many banks also present programmes for small businesses, farmers and communities with less access to banking, and an increasing number present themselves as regional banks, linking customers across borders through subsidiaries in neighbouring countries.

Reporting is the other half of the identity. Listed banks publish annual and sustainability reports, and these documents often carry the most considered typography and photography a bank produces. This guide looks at each brand’s history and what can be checked about how it presents itself, and treats the colours and type shown here as an unofficial interpretation rather than official brand assets.

From Banco de Oro to three initials.

BDO Unibank is based in Makati and is a member of the SM Group, and its branches can be found in SM malls across the country, English Wikipedia says. It is a full-service universal bank covering lending, deposits, trust and investments and cash management, with subsidiaries in leasing, investment banking, private banking and stockbroking. Wikipedia describes it as the largest bank in the Philippines by total assets. It is a separate company from the international accounting network that also uses the initials BDO.

Its public promise is a line, not a picture. The tagline “We find ways” came, the bank’s president explained in his 2019 BusinessWorld column, from clients valuing BDO for personal, cheerful and accommodating service and for staff who were willing to find ways to help; the mission he quoted was “to be the preferred bank in every market we serve.” The name has moved in steps from Spanish to initials: Acme Savings Bank in 1968, Banco de Oro in 1976, Banco de Oro Unibank in 2007 and BDO Unibank in 2010. Its rural arm carries the same initials, as BDO Network Bank, since 2019.

For a design guide, BDO Unibank shows how a bank can move from a Spanish name to three initials while keeping one promise in front of its customers. Compare BPI, the oldest bank in the Philippines according to English Wikipedia, and Metrobank, another Philippine bank. For this guide we use a deep navy, a bright blue and a marigold with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep BDO Unibank’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.