Banks throughout the world have accelerated down the road of technological advancement in the last decade. And for good reason: those who fail to advance, become obsolete. The pressure to stay ahead continues to mount as customers demand more immediate and user-friendly experiences.

Enter fintechs, like the Philippines-based Salmon, who leverage agility, talent, and innovation to not only compete and collaborate with banks, but acquire banks and transform into full-fledged financial institutions.

For senior management at established financial institutions, this is a familiar tale: legacy in house systems are on paper, fully customisable. Yet, their ability to scale quickly and flexibility is not on par with the cloud-native SaaS platforms, such as Oradian, can offer.

These cloud cores provide them with the freedom to launch new products and services in new markets quickly without having to build a financial infrastructure from the ground up. With Oradian’s latest product development, Custom Code°, customisation capabilities can be not only matched but bettered by in-house systems.

Taking a customer-centric approach to growth in the Philippines

The Philippines has seen immense growth in the fintech sector. As of 2023, the country had converted 52.8% of all monthly retail payments to digital transactions.

From a governmental perspective, there’s been a tremendous push to increase digitalisation, driving the growth of startups in the regions as well. Many of these startups operate in the fintech space, as the opportunity to address the unmet financial needs of the local population is too tempting to pass up.

Salmon is one such financial institution emerging as a powerhouse in the Philippine market.

After acquiring the Rural Bank of Santa Rosa in early 2024, Salmon has vastly increased its focus on bridging the gap between modern banking services and unbanked and underbanked customers in the Philippines and other areas of Southeast Asia.

However, meeting the needs of customers unfamiliar with current banking technologies is its own challenge, requiring Salmon to adopt a very customer-centric approach. The products and services created had to be simple to understand and work with, while also offering cost efficiency benefits.

Many technologies came into play to make this a reality, including AI-enabled solutions and a proprietary credit engine. Additionally, Salmon partnered up with Oradian, a provider of core banking technology. The exceptional customisation and configurability of Oradian’s platform enabled Salmon to fulfil its mission of creating innovative and inclusive financial products.

Other critical capabilities Oradian provided to Salmon included extensibility, flexibility, and real-time updates, as well as the power to localise services without disrupting core business functions.

With the power of cloud-native capabilities and an experienced team based in Southeast Asia, Oradian rapidly implemented a core banking support solution for Salmon’s credit line feature in months. This enabled Salmon to begin connecting with customers in their target regions quickly.

Tailoring solutions with Oradian Custom Code°

Available to all customers, Oradian’s Custom Code° empowers financial institutions to excel in dynamic markets, offering flexible, lightweight coding options that can be implemented directly into the system for tailor-made solutions.

In the case of Salmon, the advantage of system flexibility played a significant role in the institution’s decision to work with Oradian.

CEO George Chesakov said,

“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.”

Oradian Custom Code° offers several essential capabilities that make it easy for financial institutions to tailor the solution to their exact needs.

Popular use cases include:

Specialised calculations: Oradian’s specialised calculations allow institutions to set product-specific rules, such as automatically applying late fees when accounts exceed a set threshold, which streamlines adaptation to new market conditions without manual recalculations.

Enhanced reporting: With advanced reporting, institutions can generate insights through custom formulas and data tags, allowing for swift, data-driven responses to shifting client needs and regulatory changes.

This increases operational efficiency by proactively identifying and responding to unique client needs in specific geographic regions, such as the Philippines.

Building custom APIs: Institutions can develop unique APIs, like combining “create account” and “edit account” actions, directly within the system.

Oradian’s custom API capabilities improve system interoperability and scalability, allowing financial institutions to keep pace with evolving requirements and streamline financial workflows.

The results – Salmon vastly increases mobile app usage for payments

Since the implementation of Oradian’s system, Instafin, Salmon has seen remarkable growth and adoption of its digital capabilities. Over 90% of Salmon’s customers today use the company’s mobile app to monitor and make payments despite the previously unfamiliar nature of modern financial technologies for customers in the region.

With real-time alerts and flexibility, Salmon can serve these customers according to their needs and preferences.

Oradian offers a truly future-ready core banking platform to power the growth and success of your financial institution. Oradian can enable swift entry into any market, including those that have been historically underserved.

Download the Oradian x Salmon case study case study to learn more about the challenges, results, and cloud-native core banking technology.