Philippines-focused fintech Salmon Group has closed a $100 million funding round combining equity and bonds, according to details first reported by FinTech Futures, deepening an unusually structured emerging-markets bet: the transformation of a 60-year-old rural bank into a credit-led digital institution pitched squarely at Filipino consumers that traditional lenders have long ignored.
The company was co-founded in July 2022 by Raffy Montemayor and Pavel Fedorov. Instead of launching a greenfield digital bank, the founders screened fifteen small Philippine rural banks before acquiring Rural Bank of Santa Rosa, Laguna, a small, well-run two-branch lender they identified as a clean entry point into the regulated banking sector.
"Salmon Bank is a rural bank, and we're building the best credit-led modern bank for Southeast Asia starting with the Philippines," Montemayor said in a recent Follow The Money interview with Bilyonaryo News Channel, framing the strategy as an omnichannel push rather than a pure-digital one. "It's about being present in all channels where customers need us. That includes digital channels, but that also includes a branch network where customers can get support from people in person."
The opportunity is defined by persistent inertia in the Philippine consumer credit market. Montemayor, a former HSBC cards executive who went on to country-lead Agoda, OLX and Carousell in the region before returning to banking, said the gap has barely narrowed in more than a decade.
"Fifteen years ago, six million unique credit card customers existed in the Philippines. Fifteen years later, it's eight million. So it hasn't changed much, and unfortunately, it's because the infrastructure needed to do lending to underserved Filipinos was not there yet," he said, pointing to the more recent scale-up of the national ID system and the deepening data pool at the Credit Information Corporation as the enablers that finally allow credit-led models like Salmon's to price risk on thin-file borrowers.
Montemayor was unsparing about the customer experience at incumbent Philippine banks. "People are waiting in long lines, sitting in white monoblock chairs under the scorching sun, trying to get served by their bank branch. And then when it's finally their turn, they're greeted by a guard with a shotgun who is the gatekeeper to see if they're worthy enough to enter the branch. And then we have bank apps that say they're going to help but then are down when you need them the most, such as on payday."
Salmon's product backbone is a credit-first distribution network of more than 2,000 salespeople deployed nationwide alongside two owned bank branches, with plans to expand to five branches across Metro Manila, Cebu and Cagayan de Oro. Deposits are funded in part through a high-yield time deposit launched in February 2024 at 8.88%, which Montemayor said now sits at 6.0% to 6.5% for one-, two- and three-year terms following 175 basis points of rate cuts from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. The minimum entry ticket is PHP 500,000.
The founder said the bank's deposit growth is designed to fully fund the loan book, an internal metric the team treats as a test of sustainability. "We grow our deposits sufficient to fund the needs of the bank and to build the loan portfolio. That's very important. That's how we're building a sustainable bank. And we also know how to properly lend to customers, do it in a profitable way and provide more access to credit."
Staffing, Montemayor said, has leaned heavily on frustrated senior hires from incumbent Philippine banks. "Many of the traditional banks are focused on corporate customers. That's where they earn their money. And I think that's where fintechs like ourselves, we make a difference because we're focused on the everyday Filipino and their financial services needs. And that's what drew people to join banking in the first place."
Asked about the unusual company name, he pointed back to the animal. "We're inspired by the fish. Salmon swim upstream. They go against the flow to achieve their singular mission, which is for them to lay eggs. And for us, that's financial inclusion. And that's what we're doing. We're going against the flow of the way traditional financial services is done."
The $100 million round lands in a Southeast Asian fintech funding environment that has otherwise compressed. Philippine peers Tonik, UnionDigital and Maya Bank have each tightened growth plans since 2024, and regional totals in the CB Insights Q1 2026 read showed Asia fintech deal count down 32% year-on-year. Salmon's ability to raise both equity and bonds at this scale — and to structure its consumer lending off a rural bank licence rather than a digital bank licence — sets the round apart from the current cohort.
For now, Salmon's model remains a minority position in Philippine banking. But a $100 million top-up, a deposit-funded loan book, and regulatory coverage already secured through an acquired rural bank gives the company a distinctive runway into the country's estimated 50 million unbanked and underbanked adults.