Dennis Gaviola

Article (news)

Salve Ibaňez

ABS-CBN News

Imagine this financial journalist&#39;s fantasy: an open competition among billionaires and the country&rsquo;s top CEOs on who can write the most cost-efficient AI prompt. Who do you think will win?I bet it would be Lance Gokongwei &mdash; and I&#39;ll admit I may be slightly biased, having just read about his P2.03-billion personal investment in PhilWeb, acting in his personal capacity, for a stake of up to 15 percent in the company&#39;s gaming technology and AI infrastructure push. The market is currently abuzz on that news.But if you have another vote, do let me know.At least among Monetary Board members, I know for a fact it&#39;s MBM Romy Bernardo who is most confident in his ability to out-prompt the engineers. And that skill is not just nice-to-have, ha. That &quot;secret&quot; Claude command circulating on your feed &mdash; the one promising snappier AI responses and better outputs &mdash; isn&#39;t just a productivity hack. It&#39;s a survival skill, at least cost-wise.Here&#39;s the quiet worry in boardrooms across the country: AI costs are rising. Not because tokens are getting more expensive &mdash; they&#39;re actually getting cheaper, with per-token pricing dropping over 67 percent in a single year. The problem is that companies are using exponentially more of them.This was the point Xenai Digital Founder and CEO Pauline Pangan made on Business Outlook today &mdash; one of the sharpest Filipino voices on enterprise AI transformation. I love how she explained it through a metaphor every Millennial will recognize instantly. We used to pay per character for SMS, then per word, then per message. Now it&#39;s all-you-can-text.We&#39;ll get there eventually with AI queries, she said. But in the meantime, you have to budget your tokens wisely &mdash; and that means changing the way you prompt your AI. Be more specific, don&rsquo;t make your AI tool search the whole universe for what you need, shorten your prompts.Pangan has been unambiguous about what the bigger challenge is: the Philippines&#39; AI problem is no longer access to technology. It&#39;s the willingness of leaders to rethink how their organizations actually operate.<div>THE BILL THAT COULD PUT P10,000 BACK IN YOUR POCKET</div>I have spent decades telling Filipinos the same things. Pay your bills on time. Track your spending. Build a record of responsible financial behavior. What I did not always say out loud is the uncomfortable truth sitting underneath that advice: for millions of unbanked Filipinos, those doors are not ready to open. Our credit bureau, despite its well-meaning mandate, only sees Filipinos who already have a loan or credit history. First-time borrowers are invisible to lenders. And that is increasing the cost of lending by fintechs who are challenging legacy systems.&nbsp;A bill recently filed in Congress aims to fix exactly that. The Open Finance and Consumer Data Empowerment Act of 2025 (HB 6669) would give Filipinos the legal right to authorize the transfer of their own financial and transactional data &mdash; bill payments, e-wallet history, subscription activity, rewards card usage covering up to two years &mdash; to accredited lenders for credit evaluation. In a stroke, it redefines what counts as evidence of creditworthiness, and it does so in a way that finally reflects how Filipinos actually live and manage their money. But I do get how that can sound scary to us all.However, before you give in to the fear, consider the economic stakes. In a recent LinkedIn commentary, Salmon co-founder Pavel Fedorov put a number on it: if unlocking this siloed personal financial data were to reduce effective borrowing costs by half &mdash; bringing Philippine rates in line with what we see elsewhere in Southeast Asia &mdash; the net benefit to Filipino borrowers could collectively reach P775 billion a year in saved interest payments.That&#39;s a dizzying number. It is roughly equivalent to the country&#39;s entire annual social protection budget, double the national healthcare budget, and enough to return approximately P10,000 to every adult Filipino annually. The unsecured consumer lending market this applies to is estimated at P1.54 trillion, or roughly $25 billion.The bill still has a long road through Congress. But the structural argument holds, no matter how scary it is to support portability of financial information. According to the BSP&#39;s 2025 Consumer Finance and Inclusion survey, formal financial account ownership has actually dropped &mdash; from 56 percent in 2021 to 50 percent last year.More cashless but less included. The opposite of where we want to go. I hope the bill can change that, but the information flow needs to get better. It feels too technical. Malayo pa sa bituka. Care to chime in to find a solution? Because I would definitely want to see one.<div>Boardroom Tea comes out every Wednesday.</div>

Here's the quiet worry in boardrooms across the country: AI costs are rising, but not because tokens are getting more expensive.

Here's the quiet worry in boardrooms across the country: AI costs are rising, but not because tokens are getting more expensive.

Boardroom Tea: The real cost of your lengthy AI prompts

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Boardroom Tea: The real cost of your lengthy AI prompts

Salve Ibaňez,

ABS-CBN News

Published June 24, 2026 10:00 PM PHT

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Boardroom tea

AI

tokens

Lance Gokongwei

PhilWeb

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