A REPUTABLE school has conferred a peace fellow award on a very prominent and globally recognised individual who holds the distinction of being the only Filipino banker who brought back to profitability two severely ailing banks in the 90s and 2000s.

Lorenzo Villanueva Tan, 63, recently received from the Lourdes School Quezon City the 2025 St. Francis of Assisi Peace Fellow Award for his remarkable feats as a brilliant, internationally recognised banker and responsible citizen.

He graduated from high school at Lourdes School in 1978. Tan also finished elementary in that school.

Tan, president and chief executive officer of the House of Investments, Inc., is known for several monikers such as “Miracle Man of Banking” and “Mr. Turnaround.”

As HOI president, he manages a massive business entity with stakes in financial services, property and property services, education, automotive, energy, health care, death care and construction.

The awardee is the younger sibling of Nestor Tan, the president/CEO of Banco de Oro, the Philippines’ no. 1 bank in assets at over P4.6 trillion.

The younger Tan earned those monikers for bringing back two severely financially ailing banks–United Coconut Planters Bank (UCPB) in 1998 at 37 and Philippine National Bank (PNB) at 40 in 2001–into profitability ahead of the timetable.

His handling of PNB for just over a year is unmatched by any other Filipino banker in history, according to critics.

PNB was able to go from five straight years of losses to stability under the banker’s leadership.

It then doubled its net income in 2004 and was ready for privatization the following year, two years ahead of schedule.

The bringing to financial stability of these two banks is not the only laurels attributed to Tan.

In 2007 he was named president and chief executive officer of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., a position he held until 2016.

Many of his banking peers consider his stint as RCBC as the highlight of his stellar, marvelous banking career.

“He is very good, incomparable,” said Eduardo Sergio Edeza, a former national treasurer, San Miguel Corp. SVP and Bank of Commerce president, in 2013.

“You cannot become a BAP president just by wearing colorful tuxedos. You have to be voted for by your peers,” said the late Rep. Renato Diaz, a former chairman of the House Ways and Means committee and president of Bancommerce Investment Corp., in 2016.

During his first year with RCBC, he steered the bank to a 56% growth in its net income at P3.21 billion, the most remarkable profit growth among the Philippines’ top 10 banks then.

RCBC recorded in 2009 a 54% increase in its net income at P3.33 billion. This was followed by net incomes of P4.28 billion in 2010, P5.9 billion in 2011 and P5.94 billion in 2012.

Tan is a certified public accountant who studied at the Dela Salle University (DLSU) and JL Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

From 2013 to 2016, he was the president of the Bankers’ Association of the Philippines (BAP), then an organisation of 36 universal and commercial banks (UKBs).

It was in those years that he represented the BAP in the ASEAN Bankers Association (ABA), the national banking associations from the 10-member countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

While serving as BAP head, he led the merger of two automated teller machine (ATM) networks, Megalink and Bancnet; spearheaded the merger of the Philippine Stock Exchange and the Philippine Dealing and Exchange, the Philippines’ bond and foreign exchange platform.

He also served as chairman of the Asian Bankers Association, a banking association of 103 banks from 26 Asian countries.

During his tenure as ABA chairman, he encouraged the association’s members to offer innovative products that help the movement of debt and equity from markets with excess funds to markets with demand for development such as infrastructure, manufacturing equipment, or other long term needs.

The many positions he held during his long, illustrious banking experience earned him numerous awards and accolades.

Some of these were the Ten Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) for Banking in 1999; top taxpayers in the Philippines in 2012, 2013 and 2015; among the Philippines’ Top 25 Visionaries in 2014; and PeopleAsia “People of the Year” award in 2015 and 2016.

That same year, he was among the “16 men who matter” in the Philippines list.

In 2011, Tan received from DLSU the La Sallian Achievement Award for being an alumni who “achieved either industrial, managerial, professional, vocational, or public service distinction or series of distinctions.” By ED VELASCO

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