Global fintech firm targets PH market – Manila Bulletin

Local banks are in the sights of global fintech platform provider Intellect Design Arena, which is targeting the Philippines as a lucrative “strategic market”.

In the short term, in just a couple of years, the company expects to rake in $10 million annually, about NOK 546 million, from the software requirements of Philippine banks undergoing digital transformation, said Rajesh Saxena, managing director, Global Consumer Banking. Manila Bulletin.

Last year, Intellect Design Arena had revenues of $250 million (P13.65 billion) internationally.

To date, the company has the world’s largest cloud-based, Application Programming Interface (API)-led microservices-based multi-product FinTech platform in banking, insurance and capital markets.

The financial systems of more than 270 banks in over 57 countries already run on the platform.

“The Philippines is a strategic market for us and we want to build our business here,” Saxena pointed out. “We deliver software and solutions for banks. We have the products and the platform to transform them. It’s a win-win scenario.”

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Gone was the previous reluctance of local banks to go digital, he confirmed.

Currently, “We are in discussion with many big banks here and we expect to close these deals in a few months,” he revealed.

Their current clients include Philippine Business Bank (for core digital banking, deposits, savings and loans), Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), Philippine National Bank (PNB) and Banco de Oro (BDO) (for online cash handling), as well as Citibank Philippines, UnionBank, Land Bank of the Philippines (LBP) and China Bank.

“Banks’ profits are being squeezed and new digital banks are coming,” according to the CEO.

Competition is fierce because it is now normal for one person to have two or more banks.

As banks fight for a greater share of the customer wallet, they need to reduce their costs, which they can only achieve by digitizing their operations.

With the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) pushing for open banking, “we have seen early signs of some local banks entering the cloud, both public and private clouds,” he observed.

The cloud provides elasticity, so that banks can easily scale either up or down. It also provides security and allows them to upgrade without downtime.

“The Cloud Delivers the Next Stage of Transformation for Banks.”

So far, local banks are already in the process of digital onboarding, where they can register for an account anywhere, online, without having to go to a bank branch, present documents and go through human verification.

Local banks are also interested in embedded finance, allowing them to place a financial product in a non-financial customer experience, travel or platform, such as ride-hailing app Grab.

Banks are also starting to leverage analytics to maximize the vast customer data they have collected.

This year, BSP aims to digitize 50 percent of retail payments.

Nevertheless, many banks must digitize and many of them still do not have the capacity to do so, according to the CEO.