Certification International Philippines, Inc. (CIPI) awarded the certification for ISO 9001:2008 to the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC) for its claims settlement operations on June 16, 2010, in simple ceremonies held at the PDIC office in Makati City. It is PDIC’s first ISO certification which took a record half a year to accomplish.

ISO refers to International Organization for Standardization, the world’s largest developer and publisher of international standard for business, government, and society. ISO is a network of the national standard institutes of 163 countries based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The milestone was achieved after PDIC passed the crucial Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits of CIPI without findings of non-conformities. CIPI is a certifying body affiliated with the United Kingdom-based Certification International.

CIPI Managing Director Renato Navarrete commended PDIC President Jose C. Nograles for steering the Corporation towards the ISO certification, citing his leadership skills which reflected the commitment of PDIC management to the Quality Management System (QMS), to continual improvement, and to customer satisfaction. He said that, with the ISO certification of PDIC’s claims settlement operations, the country’s financial sector is grounded and the integrity of the system is protected.

President Nograles said that the ISO certification is a testimony to PDIC’s commitment to raise the bar of public service delivery to depositors to world-class standards.

PDIC has undertaken initiatives to re-engineer its claims settlement operations to provide better protection to depositors. In November 2009, President Nograles ordered the review of the Corporation’s systems and processes with the endview of streamlining and simplifying claims procedures and aligning these to global standards and international best practices. As early as March 2008, the PDIC President had already rallied the Corporation, during its action planning cascading, to benchmark its core processes with international standards, including the Core Principles of the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI) where PDIC is a founding member and one of the most proactive in the Asia Pacific region. The call was again echoed during PDIC’s anniversary in June 2008 and strategic planning exercise in October 2008.

Successive bank failures in 2008, including the unprecedented simultaneous closures of 12 Legacy-affiliated banks in December 2008, prompted the Corporation to undertake a review and simplification of its claims processes. The 12 Legacy banks alone had deposits of around P14 billion in about 135,000 accounts, and these successive closures have stretched PDIC’s systems and resources to the limit, which evidently were not drawn to address voluminous transactions of Legacy’s magnitude.

In December 2009, the Corporation signed a memorandum of agreement with the Development Academy of the Philippines to formulate and develop the QMS on PDIC’s claims settlement operations for ISO certification. CIPI was engaged as third-party ISO certifying body early this year.