A Philippine retirement deposit is paid into the Authority’s account

The Philippines’ retirement visa requires a deposit, and the Philippine Retirement Authority runs two pages that bear on it: one naming the banks licensed to accept the deposit, one publishing monthly sheets of interest rates per accredited bank. Read together on 19 September 2026, they leave a question standing that neither answers. Both are set out below, with the date each carries.

Where the money actually goes

The Authority publishes a list of banks it describes as “authorized financial institutions by the PRA is licensed to accept SRRVisa deposit”. Read on 19 September 2026, eight are named: Security Bank, KEB Hana Bank (formerly Korea Exchange Bank), the Development Bank of the Philippines, Philippine National Bank, Shinhan Bank, UnionBank, Bank of Commerce and Yuanta Savings Bank.

The same page carries wiring instructions. For a transfer through the Development Bank of the Philippines, the beneficiary is not the applicant. It is “Philippine Retirement Authority”, at an address on Paseo de Roxas in Makati City, account number 0405-027438-100, with the remittance purpose given as “PRA SRRV Deposit of (FULL NAME OF RETIREE—as shown on passport bio-page and DATE OF BIRTH)”.

So the deposit does not sit in the applicant’s own account with a note attached. It is transferred into an account in the Authority’s name, at a bank the Authority has designated, and identified there by the retiree’s name and date of birth. The instructions add: “Include at least US$50 to cover bank charges. Any amount received in excess of the required visa deposit shall be credited to the retiree-applicant’s account.”

How large the deposit is depends on which category the applicant falls into, and The Legation Times set those bands out separately on 21 September.

What the Authority publishes about interest

Under Finance, the Authority maintains a section called Interest Rate. It describes itself as giving “an up to date list of interest rates per month”, and it says the list is “useful feature that will help users gain knowledge of the interest rates and can overall aid in better decision making”.

The letters SRRV do appear in that description: the page says the list makes it possible to check “the terms of placement in days and the corresponding interest rates for the amount of dollar or peso equivalent placement made per accredited bank”. The word deposit does not appear on that page at all. So the page names SRRV beside a set of placement rates, and does not say that the visa deposit is the placement, or who receives the interest on it.

The most recent sheet reachable from page one of that listing, read on 19 September 2026, was posted on 26 May 2026 and is headed “PHILIPPINE RETIREMENT AUTHORITY — Interest Rates — As of MAY 31, 2026”. That sheet is a scanned, hand-signed document. In its US dollar table, in the only placement band carrying any figures — the band labelled “$1,000 – and above” — the annual rates by bank and term run:

• Philippine National Bank — 0.026 at 30 days, 0.035 at 90, 0.100 at 180, 0.125 at 360
• Banco de Oro — 0.05 at 90 days, 0.10 at 360
• Bank of Commerce — 0.05 at 90 days; Union Bank of the Philippines — 0.05 at 30 days
• Shinhan Bank, Korean Exchange Bank, Security Bank and the Development Bank of the Philippines — 0.05 at 360 days
• Yuanta Savings Bank — 1.00 at 60 days

Those are percentages a year, exactly as printed. The dollar table is divided into six placement bands and only the first carries any entry; the other five are blank across every bank and every term. The peso table is populated at the larger sizes, where Union Bank shows 0.63 to 0.8 and both Banco de Oro and Philippine National Bank show 0.250 to 0.375.

The date at the top, and one name that appears on only one page

The listing is ordered by date posted, newest first: 26 May, then 29 April, 7 April, 27 February, and two items both posted on 4 February, the sheets for December 2025 and January 2026. Read on 19 September 2026, nothing on page one of that listing had been posted after 26 May.

A second check was run against the filenames. At the path the April and May documents use, files named for June, July, August and September 2026 all returned HTTP 404, while the April and May files returned the documents themselves; the test was validated against those two known cases first. Run again on 19 September, it gave the same result.

What those two checks measure is the first page of one listing and one filename pattern, on one date. They do not establish that the Authority has stopped publishing, and this article does not say that it has. Neither check excludes a later sheet published elsewhere on the site.

One further observation belongs beside it, and it is offered as an observation. Banco de Oro appears in the rate tables on the May sheet. It does not appear among the eight banks on the accredited-banks page read on 19 September 2026. Two pages, two readings, on the dates given. Nothing read explains the difference, and no conclusion is drawn from it here. It is also the reason this article does not describe the rate sheet as covering the designated banks: on the dates read, the two lists were not the same list.

Two neighbouring routes put the money somewhere else

Korea’s Immigrant Investor Scheme for Public Business states: “Principal Protection — Notwithstanding no interest until the full recovery, the scheme guarantees the return of the original amount you invested.”

Indonesia’s five-year second-home visa asks instead for a “surat pernyataan komitmen menyimpan dana pada rekening sendiri di bank milik negara senilai paling sedikit US$50.000” — a commitment to keep at least US$50,000 in the applicant’s own account at a state-owned bank.

What this article does not say

It does not say who receives the interest. The deposit is paid into an account in the Authority’s name; the Authority publishes placement rates per accredited bank and describes them as information that will “aid in better decision making”; but no page read here says the interest on an SRRV deposit is credited to the retiree, and none says it is not. The question is left where the documents leave it.

It does not say the deposit earns little, or much. The only figures used are those printed on the sheet of 31 May 2026, and they are not compared with any rate outside it. No exchange rate is used and no figure is converted — the Authority’s own homepage carries a box reading “Exchange Rate: 1 USD =” with nothing after it.

Whether the deposit is returned, and on what conditions, is not established by the pages read. Nor is what the blank placement bands mean, nor why one bank appears on one page and not the other.

What the documents do support is narrow. A required deposit is paid into an account in the Authority’s name. The Authority publishes sheets of placement rates per accredited bank and says they are there to help a reader decide. The newest item on page one of that listing, when it was read on 19 September 2026, was a sheet dated 31 May 2026. Nothing read says whose interest it is.