The Medal

This medal is a symbol of two powerful emotions: fear and motivation. And these two emotions will determine who and what will you become in the future. They are the sources and foundation of your actions, decisions, and choices-- small or big-- which will either make you or break you. 

Today, I will speak about dreams and how I came about realizing in a hard way the dangers of focusing too much on numbers and end results as a measure of success and self-worth.

Who among you think you are successful in your chosen field? What is your perception about success and excellence? Is it based on medals and certificates you earn?

When I was still in high school, I thought that success is always measured by grades and number of medals. I graduated salutatorian, achieved PGMA excellence award in campus journalism, and obtained several other awards to the point that I looked awkward for having so many medals hanged around my neck. Although I haven't achieved the topmost rank, which is Valedictorian, I felt proud and a sense of accomplishment. And I thought those accomplishments made my parents happy and proud.

College days came and it provided me an opportunity to set new goals. Again I always carry this belief in me that success is all about getting high grades and achieving awards. My happiness and well-being are always tied up to that idea. The first semester of my first year ends and I managed to be the top 1 in the whole College of Commerce. I also won the championship in our Accounting Wizard contest.

I felt elated and very proud for landing top 1 and I can say that that was one of the best moments of my life. These achievements fed my ego which I did not realize was already destroying my life. I became arrogant and I saw myself as something special.

When I reached 2nd year I started to lose momentum and my performance started to decline. I thought maybe I am not doing my best and I probably need to work harder. Upon reaching 3rd year I was at my worst and was totally burnt out. I almost failed in my Computer Programming subject which I considered my forte.

I am still holding on this thought that I need to get high grades and I should reach the highest honors when I graduate not realizing that I was already burnt out. My ego is telling me that I need to maintain my ranking or else people will think that I am a total failure. I had this fear that I may not be good enough to other people especially my parents and my peers.

My self-esteem started to plummet. Close friends noticed that I seem sad and too serious all the time and asked me if there is something wrong. I blatantly said that I am fine and I am just tired because of school work. My ego hinders me from letting myself be vulnerable and open up with my close friends and family afraid that they might judge me negatively.

Be more Computer Savvy

Uber's self-driving car equipped with a lot of sensors.
Copyright Forbes.com

Who among you here considered yourselves techies? Is there anyone who does not know how to use a personal computer? How about smartphone? Do you think computer skills are very important in today's fast-paced generation?

Almost everything that we do are either done through computers or managed by computers. We interact with them from the time we wake up in the morning up to the time we sleep. Even the number of sleep hours that we have are sometimes managed by computers. We are surrounded by data and information that are mostly processed by these machines. From the billboards that you see in the streets up to that tiny gadget in your hand. And computers nowadays are becoming smarter, faster, and better as more codes and data are produced and processed. There will be a time that these computers will perform much better than humans do.

According to a leading scientific "futurologist", computer power will match the intelligence of human beings within the next 20 years because of the accelerating speed at which technology is advancing. Furthermore, an academic publication titled "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization" tells us that about 47% of all jobs will be taken by robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI).  Recent innovations such as Uber's self-driving cars, Apple's personal assistant Siri, and Amazon's Go Cashless Shopping are slowly replacing some of the clerical jobs.

Maintaining Effective Internal Controls

Extent of damage of the Bangladesh Bank heist.
Photo owned by cnnphilippines.com

On July 2017, Maria Victoria Lopez, head of Metrobank's Corporate Service Management was arrested for stealing Php1.75billion from the Bank through a fake loan account.

On February 2016, unidentified hackers managed to steal over $81-million from Bangladesh Bank's account at the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve using fraudulent orders directed to the SWIFT payments system. The heist resulted to the arrest of former Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) branch Manager Maia Deguito for several violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act of 2001 (AMLA).

Another big incident which involved the country's oldest bank, Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), affected 1.5 million depositors involving a major system glitch. The glitch resulted to a double posting of bank transactions which was caused by the Programmer bypassing her supervisor's approval.

The three real examples that I had mentioned perfectly describe the concept of fraud and error which are significant costs in doing business. Do you think we can lessen the probability of happening and the impact of these unfortunate events?

Fortunately, there are several ways. And these ways are part of the Company's risk management activities which are applicable to all types of organizations regardless of size. Part of these activities are implementing appropriate controls.

The Rise of Digital Wallets and Electronic Payments

The Coins.ph logo. Coins.ph is one of the leading digital wallets and bitcoin trading platform in the Philippines. It has started its operations on year 2014.

How do you usually pay your bills? Auto-debit? Bank Transfer? Bills Payment through Internet banking? Or how about paying through mobile wallets such as coins.ph, Gcash, or Paymaya? How do you usually do shopping? Do you do it online? Are you using your debit cards in paying your purchases?

According to the World Payments Report  2017 released by Capgemini, global digital payments volumes are predicted to increase by an average 10.9 percent through 2020, reaching nearly 726 billion transactions. This report does not even include those that are taking place through Blockchain technology-- the most popular among them is bitcoin.

With the rise of digital payments, due mainly to the ubiquity of the internet, no wonder a lot of Companies nowadays especially those from the banking and financial markets evolve to fill the demand and obviously to survive in an ever-changing business environment. Some of these Companies that are worth looking at are those that you might not heard of. The likes of Gcash, Paymaya, Coins.ph, Alipay, GetgGo, among others. Each of this Company is unique but they have something in common-- to dominate the digital payments market in the Country.

First from our list is Gcash. Gcash is a payment platform that transforms the mobile phone into a virtual wallet. It is operated by Mynt, a wholly owned financial services subsidiary of Globe Telecom. Gcash has several payment capabilities. First, it can be used to pay your bills such as water, electricity and so on. Second, it can be used to buy prepaid loads to all networks and even loads that can be used for skype mobile, steam, and cignal tv.

Another good feature of Gcash is it can be linked to Mastercard and American Express which you can use to buy anything online. On top of that the mobile app can also be used to book movies, buy food and groceries by simply using your phone's camera. Have you seen those weird photos and images consisting of an array of black and white squares posted in public areas? Those are QR Codes which are mainly to store information about a certain item. And these codes have been widely used to do payment transactions.

Conversations with Myself

Carol Dweck, the author of the book Mindset continues to inspire me all these years. Her concept of the growth mindset helped me steer the wheel towards self-development. She wonderfully said "Picture your brain forming new connections as you meet the challenge and learn. Keep on going."

Last holiday season, I went to my hometown to spend my vacation. I thought to myself-- this is probably the best time for me to meditate and evaluate where am I now in my growth plan. For us as workers of the information age, holiday or vacation time is probably the only time when we are able to unplug our minds from work thus giving us time to ponder and meditate. Unless you are the workaholic type who keeps on working even during Christmas Day. Or unless you are the type who likes to realize things when they are at the most unexpected moments such as having a shower or having a dump.

I learned that when your mind is clear you become aware of the thoughts that are running through your head. There are these memories, realizations, worries, plans, goals, reminders, and unfortunately sometimes impure thoughts. I can say that these moments are valuable ones and they could be more valuable if we are able to capture our thoughts to pen and paper. Usually I encourage myself to capture my thoughts and that is why I always see to it that I have my smartphone with me all the time. And by the way, I want to endorse and recommend Microsoft OneNote app. It is a great tool for capturing all those valuable thoughts in your head. You can download it through the windows store, the app store or the play store.

While being amazed with the magnificence of the sun's silhouette when it starts to set off, I pondered-- "I have been working for almost 6 years now and I can't believe I was able to endure those hard moments in my audit life." And by the way, for those of you who are not familiar with how auditors worship their job. During the peak seasons-- and this is when businesses which are on a calendar period, prepare their financial statements for filing -- and auditors during these times work almost 24 hours a day straight even on weekends and holidays. This was the time when our Partner, shouted to my manager and said "You are not doing your job and you are not prioritizing this client! How dare you!" This was also the time when my senior associate, who keeps on pressuring me to do almost all audit works because she had a lot of clients, cursed me and said "What the fuck! Are you still not finished yet?!" Imagine that was 5 in the morning and I haven't slept since 9am the other day.