Deposit insurance payout declined to P107M in ’25
The Philippine Deposit Insurance Corp. (PDIC) paid over P100 million in claims in 2025, offering relief to customers of two rural banks that had been padlocked by regulators last year.
In a statement on Wednesday, the state deposit insurer said it had reimbursed a total of P106.9 million to depositors of shuttered Emerald Rural Bank Inc. in Bulacan and Oriental Tamaraw Rural Bank of Naujan Inc. in Oriental Mindoro.
That amount was lower than P281.5 million that the PDIC disbursed in 2024, reflecting in a decline in the number of banks that had become insolvent last year.
In 2024, three banks were closed down by the Monetary Board, the highest policy-making body of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
The PDIC said the 2025 payments covered 3,736 claims spanning 3,111 deposit accounts. The insurer said the latest disbursements went to depositors who had filed claims as well as those eligible for automatic payment under its waiver policy.
The waiver policy exempts certain depositors from filing claims if their accounts have balances of up to P500,000, and their mailing addresses are complete and up to date in bank records. The exemption applies to individual depositors who are not borrowers, spouses of borrowers or comakers of the closed banks, as well as to registered businesses and organizations.
The PDIC said depositors who have yet to file claims have up to two years from the date of takeover to do so.
The insurer assumed control of Emerald Rural Bank on Jan. 24, 2025 and Oriental Tamaraw Rural Bank of Naujan last May 13.
Last year, the PDIC implemented the new maximum deposit insurance coverage of P1 million per depositor per bank, which doubled the previous coverage of P500,000.
The expanded coverage, which took effect on March 15, 2025, was projected to fully insure over 147 million accounts, or 98.6 percent of the total deposit accounts in the local banking system as of last year.
Amendments to the PDIC charter back in 2022 allowed the state insurer to adjust the deposit insurance coverage based on inflation and other relevant economic indicators without the need for a new law.
Insurance payouts can only be made to depositors of banks that had been ordered closed by the BSP. This means that funds lost due to other reasons, like fraud, are not protected by the PDIC.
