Acom Co. is opening its first outlet in the Philippines as part of an overseas business strategy which has already taken the major Japanese consumer finance company to Thailand and Indonesia.

Acom Consumer Finance Corp., a local joint venture established a year ago with Japanese trading house Itochu Corp., has started providing unsecured personal loans at the outlet in Metro Manila's Ortigas Center in Pasig City.

Acom's Philippine unit says it mainly targets middle-class consumers with a monthly income of over P10,000 and at least three months of employment for lending up to P500,000 per deal, depending on income levels.

Borrowers are required to visit the shop only once to apply for loans and can get cash at outlets of money remittance service providers in shopping malls, office buildings and other locations in the city.

Loan interest rates per month range from 3.315 percent to 4.563 percent, Acom says.

Masaomi Gido, head of the joint venture, said at a recent opening ceremony that the Pasig City outlet is capable of handling about 1,000 potential consumers a month and aims to lend to 80 percent of them.

Capitalized at 500 million pesos, the local unit is owned 80 percent by Acom and the remaining 20 percent by Itochu and plans to open its second outlet in Ali Mall in Quezon City in February next year.

Gido added that his joint venture wants to forge a network of 30 outlets in Metro Manila within five years. The Tokyo-based lender entered Thailand in 1996 and Indonesia in 2007.

It plans to start operations in Vietnam as soon as it gets approval from the Vietnamese authorities. 

Share This Post