MANILA, Philippines - East West Banking Corp., the banking arm of the Filinvest group, is on track to reaching its goal of having 400 branches by the end of 2014. "We have 379 branches now. We more than tripled our branches in just three years. Before the year ends, we should be at least at 400 branches," Rene de Borja, chief finance officer of EastWest, told ANC. The bank has been on an aggressive three-year branch expansion program, which ends this year. After this, De Borja said they will taper the growth of bank expansion, opening only 10-15 branches a year. "We will be a bit more choosy where we open," he said. EastWest is expected to post "modest" profits this year, due to the impact of the bank expansion. "Our aggressive branch expansion, which we started in 2012, will take its biggest toll in 2014. In terms of profit, we're looking at a very modest result. But the focus remains to be on the core banking business," De Borja said. "We can start reaping the benefits (of branch expansion) next year." In the first quarter of 2014, EastWest Bank reported a 38 percent decline in its net income to P455.7 million, due to a P756 million drop in trading income. Despite the drop in profits, De Borja said its core banking business has shown strong gains in the first quarter. "EastWest has solid growth in terms of its core business, particularly our consumer loans and deposit business," he said. Asked about the growth targets for the rest of the year, De Borja said, " We expect the second quarter and the rest of the year to be the same. In regard to loan and deposit growth, we expect our growth to be at a pace above industry average." De Borja also reiterated the bank's interest in acquiring UCPB. "I'm sure a lot of banks are also interested. That bank has a very good retail banking franchise. They have more than P200 billion in deposits.... We will see if it will fit the business model of EastWest Bank," he said.