- The Philippines is a land of opportunity for financial services: “We decided to launch our own shop here in the Philippines because the market here is great. I think it’s the best country to do something in financial services.”
- There are two steps to launching financial services in the Philippines: “How do you bring people from street lenders into organised financial services? “I think there are two major things you need to do: 1) design great products that are easy to understand, and 2) use modern technology to assess credit risk to get access to these customers wherever they are.”
- Technology is about empowerment: “Why do we buy technology as a business? To be empowered to do the next step, not to be constrained. That’s why technology is important to me as CEO. I want to empower my business with each new technology addition, not have more constraints and costs.”
- Choosing a tech partner in Oradian was all about chemistry: “When we met, I think there was chemistry, and that’s important when you launch new products, because chemistry means trust. You need to be confident in your ability to solve problems intelligently to mutual benefit, and I think that’s what we found in Oradian.”
- You need the right challenge to attract the right people: “[Hiring] the right people is easy when you have the right challenge. The challenge might be technical in nature, it might be about scale, it might be a new product or a new market… create the right challenge and the right vision, and then the right people will join, first in small numbers and then over time you will be hanged from a traditional bank to a software development powerhouse.”
The story of Salmon.
Since its foundation only a year ago, Salmon has rapidly established itself as a major player in the Philippines’ financial services landscape.
A consumer fintech, Salmon’s mission is to develop better and more inclusive financial products with a focus on innovation, flexibility, security, customer care and added value for clients. Starting with in-store purchase financing, the company has ambitions to expand its range of financial services to cover all the daily needs of clients in the Philippines and beyond, bridging the financial inclusion gap for millions of consumers.
In front of a captivated audience in Manila, we spoke to CEO George Chesakov about the story so far, the role technology has played, and what he hopes to achieve with Salmon in the years ahead.
The opportunities of the Philippines market.
Founded in 2022 by financial services veterans Pavel Fedorov, George Chesakov, and Raffy Montemayor, Salmon’s journey so far has been remarkable. Driving this success has been enormous confidence in the potential of the Philippines’ financial services sector.
“We decided to launch our own shop here in the Philippines because the market here is great. I think it’s the best country to do something in financial services,” George told us.
For Salmon, there are real opportunities presented by a population still not using financial technology to its full potential. “It’s still very much unbanked,” said George, “and people don’t use their banks to their full extent, but this is changing, especially over the last few years. Finance is central to people’s lives, and you cannot really exist in modern society without robust financial services.
“Our mission is to help the transition here in the Philippines. I think we have some things to add to this exciting journey, and to help people move from cash under the mattress to really modern financial services, where people can do much more with their lives, with their money, with access to credit. I think it’s a great journey for any country, and I’m proud to be part of it here.”
But how can Salmon help unlock that potential? “I think there are two major things you need to do: 1) design great products that are easy to understand, and 2) use modern technology to assess credit risk to get access to these customers wherever they are. That’s why technology is a very important part of the journey.”
Building a relationship.
From day one, Salmon has been a tech-first business: “Why do we buy technology as a business? To be empowered to do the next step, not to be constrained. That’s why technology is important to me as CEO. I want to empower my business with each new technology addition, not have more constraints and costs.”
To empower those next steps was, Salmon had to select the right technology platform, something that wasn’t just about the technology on offer.
“We started very fast on a ready-made platform,” George told us. “I would say it was off-the-shelf, cloud-based, but very simplistic, and given our roadmap of products we thought we needed a modern foundation.” That modern foundation was Oradian.
“We actually ran into Oradian by chance! I was really surprised that the guys are very big here in the Philippines, which means Oradian knows how to work with the typical problems, they know how to report to the central bank, and that is one very important consideration.”
For Salmon, it was the flexibility and configurability of Oradian’s system that made it an excellent fit for its business model. “We looked at the technology and our CTO was so impressed that he fell in love!”
“You’ve got cloud-based systems that you cannot really change. It’s one-size fits all, and that’s not our style. What Oradian provided us is both the beauty of being a cloud-hosted, ready-made solution, but with our ability to develop it further using modern software development techniques. It makes it so much more future-proof in terms of how you build your IT organisation,” said George.
Perhaps most importantly, as in any good relationship, George felt Salmon and Oradian had chemistry. “When we met, I think there was chemistry, and that’s important when you launch new products, because chemistry means trust. You need to be confident in your ability to solve problems intelligently to mutual benefit, and I think that’s what we found in Oradian.”
The right people for the job.
But technology is only part of the story for Salmon. Underpinning its success as a tech-first firm is its ability to hire the right people. And for George, hiring those people is about offering them the right challenge.
“First you bring in the technology, then you solve the business problem. You make this technology, this challenge interesting enough for good people to join, and then suddenly – it might take months of years – you find yourself perfectly capable of doing very complex tech stuff yourself. You just need to seed the right people, and seeding the right people is easy when you have the right challenge.”
“The challenge might be technical in nature, it might be about scale, it might be a new product or a new market… create the right challenge and the right vision, and then the right people will join, first in small numbers and then over time you will be hanged from a traditional bank to a software development powerhouse.”
The future is bright.
George is ambitious and optimistic, not just about Salmon’s prospects (“I think our ambitions are millions of customers!” he said), but about the Philippines as a whole.
Concluding his interview, George gave his prediction for the future of finance in the Philippines: “The good thing about the Philippines and the good thing about the financial services business is that there can be many winners in this game.
“Being here, we’ll be building our customer base and we’ll be providing some competition to some other players, so they will have to improve and build their customer bases too. In a few years’ time, 90% of the adult population will be firmly within the grasp of modern financial services companies – and all of them will be successful!”
“Well, maybe not all of them, but most of them.”
To find out more about how Oradian powers market leaders like Salmon, get in touch today.
