Central Bank of the Philippines urges supervised institutions to tighten controls against election-related vote buying and abuse of state resources

The Central Bank of the Philippines (BSP) issued a supervisory memorandum reminding all BSP-supervised financial institutions (BSFIs) to strengthen surveillance and monitoring to prevent their products and channels from being used for vote-buying, vote-selling, and abuse of state resources linked to the 2025 elections. The BSP urged tighter controls to detect or prevent an influx of fraudulent accounts and transactions as election dates approach, including through digital channels. BSFIs were asked to reinforce customer onboarding, fraud management systems, and ongoing account and transaction monitoring, calibrating detection parameters for patterns such as concentrated account registrations in high-risk localities, large cash transactions or check encashments during the election period, unusual transaction flows between accounts and digital wallets including many-to-one and one-to-many activity, and atypical cash in or cash out volumes and values through agent channels. Where warranted, institutions should file suspicious transaction reports with the Anti-Money Laundering Council after investigating complex or unusually large transactions, unusual patterns lacking clear legal or economic purpose, activity inconsistent with a customer’s profile, or other patterns indicative of election-related illicit activity, money laundering, or terrorism financing. The reminder is framed as support for the Commission on Elections’ efforts covering the 12 May 2025 National and Local Elections and the 13 October 2025 Bangsamoro Parliamentary Elections.