This is one of the many reasons why Philippine bank deposits have been hitting record high levels - it was P8.5 trillion in December 2014 and over P9.2 trillion as of December 2015. Nevertheless, the challenge and the opportunity is to encourage more investments by OF households; it continues to lag way behind savings.
As indicated by our survey, households that allocated part of their remittances for investments, increased from 2.3% in 2007 to only 6.5% in the first quarter this year. That is over a period of nearly nine years! For institutions, the challenge is to develop and promote products suited to the needs of OFs.