Philamlife's Joey Cuisia

Believe it. Jose L. Cuisia, Jr., former Governor of the Central Bank of the Philippines and SSS Administrator, wanted to be a Christian Brother. At least during his grade school years.
By Cristine Antonette B. Catu

In those days, school was a mere ten minute walk from home, and he was greatly influenced by the Brothers who were not only teachers, but also witnesses for religio, mores and cultura. The Brothers, he said, not only spoke these three words continuously, but actively lived them as well. He was inspired and influenced by the passion that radiated from the Christian Brothers so he was determined to become one of them himself.

With the passing of the high school and then the college years, although still inspired and still strongly influenced by the Brothers, the aspiration to become one of them would change.

The new dream was to become an investment banker. There was a great attraction to bond issues and IPOs, to mergers and acquisitions, and everything in between. He pursued his degree in LiaCom, and in 1967 graduated magna cum laude, receiving many attractive offers from multinational companies.

His resume would boast of his excellent academic records and a listing of impressive extra-curriculars which included positions as Editor of the De La Salle Green & White Yearbook and the ROTC Corps Commander, in addition to active participation in the Student Council and the Student Catholic Action group. As if to further prove his well-roundedness, there was even an inclusion of his sports commitment which was made to the junior basketball varsity team.

Young and idealistic, he joined Proctor & Gamble as a Management Trainee, before leaving for the United States to get his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania as a University Scholar in 1968. He joined the Audit Department of Arthur Young & Co. in New York where he worked for 18 months before returning to the Philippines in 1972.

Despite the lure of commercial banks and other financial institutions, Cuisia would start as Assistant Manager in the local investment house, Ayala Investment & Development Corporation, eventually moving up to Senior Vice President within a relatively short period of six years.

It was while he was working with Insular Bank of Asia and America as Executive Vice President/ Chief Operating Officer that he was selected as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men for Domestic Banking in 1982. This would open bigger and more prestigious doors, including those of the SSS and the Bangko Sentral, for which he is very well known.

After seven and a half years in public service, he would return to the private sector, this time as President & CEO of Philamlife in 1993, bringing his discipline, financial expertise and broad macro-economic perspective to the largest life insurer in the country.

In these 13 years of his stewardship of Philamlife and its subsidiaries, Cuisia solidified the company’s industry leadership and profitability. Business World’s Top 1,000 for 2005 ranked Philamlife the 41st in terms of gross revenues and first among all Multinational Financial Intermediaries in the Philippines.

For Philamlife’s spectacular financial results and his contributions to the life insurance industry’s development, Cuisia was the recipient of the 2004 Raul Locsin Award for Chief Executive Officer of the Year and the first-ever Filipino recipient of the Asia Insurance Review’s Asia Insurance Personality Award in 2005.

It would be forgivable to think that Cuisia eats, sleeps and drinks only insurance and finance. How else can he manage to do everything he has? Well, nothing could be further from the truth. His current resume still echoes the well-roundedness his first ever resume possessed. He has directorships in business giants like SM Prime Holdings and Holcim, two listed companies in the PSE, while remaining active in non-profit groups such as the Philippine Cancer Society and Children’s Hour, all the while being Co-Chairman of the Board of Governors/Board of Trustees of the Asian Institute of Management and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Makati Business Club.

Cuisia is an advocate for good corporate governance and does so through his position as Chairman of the CV Starr Corporate Governance Chair in AIM which organized the Managing Corporate Governance in Asia Conference in Bali last year. He is also a strong proponent for corporate social responsibility and is chairman of the Philam Foundation that allocates its funds to education, healthcare, culture & arts and livelihood development projects nation-wide.

Cuisia competes in company bowling tournaments and is seen regularly at the Tower Club gym burning off calories during lunch-time and evening treadmill sessions. He manages to find time for his spiritual life and makes it a point to spend quality time with his family.

You will also catch Cuisia at many social functions - he is a popular figure at cocktail parties and business dinners, beside his wife, Vicky, or his many La Salle classmates that have been with him since the grade school days – Ramon Del Rosario,Jr., Perry Uy, Norman San Agustin, etc. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get to share an MRT ride with him and Richard Lee, both in green shirts, to support the DLSU basketball team at the Araneta coliseum. He’ll exchange some good-natured jeers with Richard Gordon, the Ateneo’s die-hard basketball cheer leader, while making sure the rest of the La Sallians on his side of the coliseum cheer the team to victory.

Jose L. Cuisia, Jr. – he may not have become a Christian Brother but he is religio, mores and cultura in living, breathing form. The Christian Brothers would be proud.