Salmon Group

Salmon started with a contrarian read on the Philippines: tens of millions of Filipinos have no credit history, so the banks won't touch them, so they never build a credit history. Salmon's answer was to lend first and get the license later. Three former Tinkoff operators, Pavel Fedorov, George Chesakov, and Raffy Montemayor, set it up in July 2022 and started with point-of-sale loans at retailers like SM Store.

Then came the part most fintechs never pull off. In January 2024 Salmon bought control of the Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa (Laguna), a lender that had served Filipino towns since 1963, and turned it into Salmon Bank. That deal handed a two-year-old startup a real banking license, a deposit franchise, and 60 years of heritage in one move. Today it says more than a million Filipinos use it, and it has raised $310 million to keep going.

Salmon is a consumer fintech and licensed bank rolled into one, aimed squarely at Filipinos the legacy system treats as invisible. Its bet is that data and AI can price a loan for someone with no formal credit file, and its app claims to make a lending decision in about 20 seconds.

The reach is deliberately offline and online at once. You can get financed at a store counter in ten to fifteen minutes, manage everything in a sub-6MB app built to run on any phone, and repay through GCash, Maya, 7-Eleven, or a rural bank branch. That dual footprint is the whole point in a market where half of Salmon's own customers don't have a traditional bank account.

The core problem is a chicken-and-egg trap. Most Filipinos can't get credit because they have no credit history, and they have no credit history because no one will extend them credit. Salmon attacks that with its own data and AI scoring rather than waiting for a bureau file to exist.

The second problem is access itself. Salmon reaches people regardless of smartphone ownership or location by combining a physical branch and merchant network with a lightweight app, and it leaned on partners like ECPay's roughly 490,000 over-the-counter touchpoints so repayment isn't gated on having a bank account.

The customer Salmon designs for is an everyday Filipino: a teacher, a jeepney driver, an office worker who wants to buy a phone or an appliance in installments, or borrow cash in a pinch, without a pawnshop or a loan shark. The company frames its whole mission around serving people the high-street banks and street lenders have failed.

There's a business-to-business side too. Salmon plugs into merchants like SM Store and Vans as a point-of-sale financing option, so the retailer moves more goods and the shopper gets credit at the till.

Salmon has widened from a single POS-lending product into a small suite that covers borrowing, spending, and saving. The credit line and prepaid Mastercard are the spearhead; the deposit products are what the bank license unlocked.

The standout on the savings side is aggressive by design. Salmon Bank has offered term deposit rates as high as 8.88%, a number it nicknamed the "luckiest deal in the Philippines," well above what incumbent banks pay, precisely to pull deposits toward a two-year-old brand.

Salmon makes money the way a bank does: it earns interest and fees on small-ticket consumer loans, and it funds those loans partly with customer deposits it pulls in with high savings rates. Owning a licensed bank is the engine here, because deposits are cheaper funding than pure wholesale debt.

The economics look healthy so far. Salmon Bank reported a net interest margin of 40% for 2025, which it says beats the average for rural, thrift, and digital banks in the country. There is no published pricing page; loan terms are quoted per product inside the app, and consumers have flagged the rates as high, which is the usual tension in underbanked lending.

Salmon's sharpest edge is regulatory. It is one of only a handful of fintechs in Southeast Asia that owns and operates a licensed bank, which gives it a deposit franchise and a trust advantage that unlicensed lending apps simply can't match. Rivals compete on an app; Salmon competes with a balance sheet.

The flip side is the field it plays in. Digital wallets like GCash and Maya own the everyday-payments habit, Home Credit is the incumbent in point-of-sale installment lending, and a wave of loan apps chase the same underbanked borrower. Salmon's answer is to be the one that combines AI credit scoring, a physical branch and merchant network, and a bank license under a single brand.

The traction is real and recent. Salmon says more than a million Filipinos now use it, its app carries a 4.8-star rating, and 92% of customers say they'd recommend it to friends and family.

The bank subsidiary is where the growth shows up hardest. In 2025 Salmon Bank's deposits grew about 2.8 times year on year, its retail loan portfolio expanded roughly 2.5 times, gross revenues doubled, and total assets reached PHP 4.4 billion, all while it stayed profitable with a 40% net interest margin.

Across Reddit communities like r/phinvest, the recurring praise is that Salmon is legitimate and safe: it's SEC-registered, BSP-licensed, backed by the IFC and Abu Dhabi's sovereign fund, and users single out a professional, non-harassing collections process, which is a low bar the Philippine lending-app market routinely fails.

The recurring gripe is price. The most common complaints center on high interest rates and strict rules for raising credit limits, plus late fees for missed payments, though reviewers note the fees stay inside the SEC's fair-collection rules. It reads less like a scam warning and more like the standard cost-of-credit debate for underbanked lending.

Salmon has raised about $310 million to date, split roughly $160 million in equity and $150 million in bonds, an unusually capital-heavy backing for a company barely three years old. The cap table reads like a who's-who: the IFC (World Bank Group), Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund ADQ, Lunate, and Antler VC.

The most recent round, in April 2026, brought in $100 million, made up of $60 million in equity and $40 million in debt, and added US names including Moore Strategic Ventures, FJ Labs, Spice Expeditions, and Washington University's endowment manager. Raising that in a tight market for emerging-market fintech is its own signal.

Salmon's stated ambition is to become the leading credit-led neobank in Southeast Asia and, eventually, a full financial super app for millions of Filipinos. With $310 million raised, a working bank license, and a loan book and deposit base both growing more than two-fold a year, it has the fuel and the franchise to chase that.

The risk is the one every underbanked lender carries. Growth is powered by small-ticket loans to thin-file borrowers, so the whole thesis rests on that AI credit scoring holding up as the book scales and rates draw complaints. A 40% net interest margin says the model works today; the open question is how it performs through a downturn.

Salmon's brand voice is built around swimming upstream and challenging convention, and its people bench backs that up. The founders and much of senior management come out of fintech and banking, including a leadership team spanning global banks like Citigroup, Standard Chartered, and Nomura and a Kaggle Master running AI and data. AI sits at the center by design, with a dedicated SVP of AI and Data.

The workforce is genuinely international and distributed. Engineering and product roles are staffed across Europe, Georgia, and Kazakhstan, while sales, collections, and branch operations are on the ground across the Philippines. Salmon runs hybrid-first out of a Bonifacio Global City office, with core hours on Manila time and heavy relocation support for people willing to move.

Salmon isn't a single company but a group. Salmon Group Ltd sits on top of three Philippine entities: FHL Financing Company, Inc. and Sunprime Finance Inc. (both SEC-licensed financing companies) and Salmon Bank (Rural Bank) Inc., the former Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa (Laguna) that carries the actual banking license.

That structure is heavily regulated on purpose. The lending arms answer to the SEC, the bank to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, and all three hold National Privacy Commission Seals of Registration for data handling. AML and KYC controls run deep across its operations roles, which is table stakes for a licensed lender in the market.

Salmon's press trail tracks a fast climb: from a licensed-bank acquisition in early 2024 to a nine-figure raise and a strong bank-performance report in 2026. The coverage skews toward funding milestones and the regulatory wins that make a fintech-owns-a-bank story unusual.