Several factors contribute to the Philippines’ status as the world’s top fintech outsourcing destination. Among these are a highly skilled, English-speaking workforce, competitive labor costs, and a strong cultural affinity for Western markets. Furthermore, the country’s government has made concerted efforts to foster a business-friendly environment, supporting the growth of its BPO sector through infrastructure investments, streamlined regulations, and incentives for multinational companies.

According to Ralf Ellspermann, CEO of PITON-Global, a leading call center in the Philippines, “Fintech BPO to the Philippines encompasses a wide range of front- and back-office processes. Front-office services include customer support, technical support, sales, and marketing, while back-office functions involve data management, risk management, compliance, and finance-related tasks. The comprehensive nature of these services allows fintech companies to focus on their core business while benefitting from the expertise and scalability provided by their outsourcing partners.”

In addition to traditional BPO offerings, the Philippines has developed specialized services tailored to the fintech industry. “These include cryptocurrency exchange support, mobile wallet services, and payment processing. With the rising demand for digital financial solutions, Philippine BPO providers have adapted their offerings to cater to the unique needs of fintech clients, ensuring seamless integration and optimal service delivery,” says Ellspermann.

The Philippines has invested heavily in cutting-edge technologies to maintain its competitive edge in the fintech BPO space. Some of these technologies include:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants are increasingly utilized to handle routine customer inquiries, improving efficiency and freeing up human resources for more complex tasks.

• Blockchain: Blockchain technology is employed for secure data storage and management, particularly in areas such as payments, identity verification, and regulatory compliance.

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA streamlines repetitive back-office tasks, reducing errors and accelerating processing times for services like data entry and reconciliation.

• Cloud Computing: Cloud-based infrastructure enables rapid scalability and flexibility for fintech clients, allowing them to expand or contract services as needed without large capital investments.

“Industry-leading BPOs in the Philippines adhere to stringent security measures and protocols to safeguard client data. Many providers hold certifications such as PCI-DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II, and ISO 27001, ensuring that they meet international standards for data protection,” explains Ellspermann. Additional security measures include:

• Compliance with international data protection regulations, such as the GDPR and the CCPA.

• Implementation of encryption technologies for secure data transmission and storage.

• Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments to identify and mitigate potential risks.

• Employee background checks and training in data security best practices.

“In the fast-paced, globalized financial technology industry, 24/7 and multilingual support is crucial for the success of digital innovators and disruptors. A high level of service ensures that customers around the world can access support when needed, regardless of time zone or language barriers. The Philippines’ diverse, multilingual workforce and commitment to world-class, round-the-clock support make it a natural choice for fintech companies looking to cater to a global clientele,” asserts Ellspermann.

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From neglecting your financial stockpile to paying debts late, there may be some detrimental behaviors that are bad for your finances and set back your financial goals. Understandably, recent global events and the resulting economic downturns might have impacted the way you manage your money—in one way or another. Still, now is a great time to take charge of your situation and choose the path toward a healthier financial future.

Are you planning to make some changes in the way you handle your finances? Here are some of the key financial habits that you may want to reassess, not just for the coming months, but for all the years to come.

Paying Off Debt

It’s natural for people to borrow money at some point in their lives, and most forms of debt are not inherently harmful. For the most part, it’s only when you let debt accumulate that it becomes a threat to your financial success and stability.

If you’re entering the new year with pre-existing debt on your shoulders, you may want to consider your options for debt consolidation. These options include credit card balance transfers and using a loan to repay all existing debt through a unified channel.

While there’s no harm in aiming to be debt-free, you should understand that it’s often unrealistic to have all your debts paid off in one fell swoop. If you’ve racked up debt from various sources, you may want to start practicing the habit of paying your smallest debts first. Your goal is to repay debt as soon as you can, and the easiest way to start is by paying off the smallest, most manageable amounts.

Having manageable debt ultimately signals creditors to trust you better—which, in turn, boosts your chances of getting your next loan or credit card application approved.

Having Reasonable Spending Priorities

It’s not always easy to follow through on your goals to spend less, but you can start curbing your spending by sharpening your skills in determining spending priorities. Ideally, you should be able to differentiate between urgent expenses, must-haves, and purchases to save up for. This can help you better identify all the expenses you need to make and how you can cover them, be it through your own savings or on credit. In the end, your funds will thank you for having a good sense of what is worth spending on.

Maintaining a Budget Plan

Regardless of how much you earn, you need a budget plan to adequately map out your cash flow. If you’re already doing the bare minimum of paying all current obligations without giving any thought to your savings, you may want to consider going beyond this mindset and proactively maintaining a budget. Having a budget plan is useful for many things, including tracking your spending, estimating your expenses, and calculating how much you should save to avoid spending more than you earn. When creating your budget, you can classify expenses based on fixed costs (rent, internet services, insurance payments) and flexible costs (food, leisure). Ideally, this will help you determine which of your expenses you can cut first if you need to save money.

This year, make it a point to improve your financial barometer by having a regularly updated budget—preferably one that is flexible enough to withstand precarious economic situations.

Preparing An Emergency Fund

If you haven’t done so yet, you should consider starting an emergency fund to stay sufficiently prepared for unexpected events. Most financial experts suggest having at least six months’ worth of your salary in an emergency account, which naturally sounds unachievable at first. The trick is to consistently contribute to your fund—to regularly plant the seeds until you have enough to keep you on track toward financial recovery when the time calls for it.

Future-Proofing Your Finances

Lastly, you should use the coming year as an opportunity to explore your options to future-proof your wealth. It’s easy to focus on the now, but a few decades down the line, you might regret not building your financial foundation when you still had the time. This year, don’t forget to factor in matters such as retirement when it comes to your finances. Apart from beefing up your savings for retirement purposes, you can explore options for generating passive income, such as putting your money into investments.

New Year, Better Habits

One of the most common qualms about making yearly resolutions is the inability to continue once the latter months arrive. That shouldn’t be the case with your financial goals this time around. As another year begins, don’t forget to reevaluate which money management habits work for you and which don’t. In the end, it’s habits like the ones mentioned above that create opportunities to make each year more prosperous than the last.

The post 5 Financial Habits You Should Reassess Yearly appeared first on FinTech Ranking.

Building on the success of its all-digital savings portfolio and successful launch of its first lending product, Quick Loan eligibility , the new products are set to position Tonik as among the pioneering digital lenders in the country with loans catering to every need.

Quick, convenient, and coupled with fixed low-interest rates, Flex Loan empowers customers with both freedom and flexibility to chase their dream purchases and experiences perfect for the start of another year. Tonik’s best priced unsecured loan yet, Flex Loan offers 2.49% monthly interest for up to 24 months, for a loan as much as Php 250,000. No collateral is needed as employed customers would only need to provide their latest bank statement and proof of income.

A home equity type of loan, Big Loan offers a one-time multipurpose installment loan that allows a borrower to use the equity value of their home. This property is then pledged to the bank as collateral, securing an amount of up to Php 2,500,000.

Relatively new in the Philippines, this type of lending product continues to be popular in more developed markets such as the United States. It is mostly used for home improvement, investment for family businesses, and debt consolidation under a lower interest product.

With Big Loan, the first fully digitalized collateral product in the market, customers only need to come to the Tonik Hub once to formally sign the loan and mortgage documents. Offering the fastest-in-market approval time in a fully digital manner within minutes of the application, and disbursement of loans in seven (7) business days from submission of documents, proceeds of the loan are disbursed into customers’ Tonik Savings Accounts. No property appraisal fees are charged and no third-party appraisal is required.

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Made possible in partnership with Bayad, a pioneer and leader in the outsourced payments industry, users can settle their dues with a wide range of billers right in the Tonik app. This includes top utilities such as MERALCO, PLDT, Maynilad Water Services Inc., Manila Water Company Inc., Smart, Converge ICT, Pag-IBIG, Easytrip Services Corporation, Metrobank Credit Card, and Visayan Electric Company (VECO). Soon, more merchants and billers will likewise be made available in the app. Payments are posted within 48 hours of transaction.

Users who share a Group Stash can save together to pay a bill. Once the target amount is reached, the Group Stash owner can move it to their Tonik Savings Account so that they may pay the bill.

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Customers can now send and receive real-time transactions for up to Php 50,000 to and from participating banks and electronic money issuers with no added transfer fees from Tonik.  

To top up a Tonik account, simply go to the “Top Up” options in the app dashboard, choose InstaPay and copy the 14-digit Tonik account number. Once copied, launch the source bank’s mobile app or online banking website, paste the 14-digit Tonik account number and enter the desired amount and other required transaction details. Lastly, perform the required authorization to finalize the transaction.

To transfer funds to another bank, just click on the “Send Money Options” on the app dashboard and select “To another bank.” Change the channel to InstaPay and input the desired cash-out amount, transfer purpose, beneficiary account details, and perform the required authorization.

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GoTyme Bank is a joint venture between Tyme, a Singapore-headquartered digital banking group, and the Gokongwei Group, a Philippine-based conglomerate.

Read more: Tech in Asia

The post GoTyme Bank gets go signal to set up Philippine digital bank appeared first on FinTech Ranking.

The round was led by SIG Venture Capital and included participation from EDBI and First Pacific Company, as well as returning shareholders PLDT, KKR, Tencent, International Finance Corporation, IFC Emerging Asia Fund and IFC Financial Institutions Growth Fund. 

Read more: TechCrunch

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No matter your industry or the size of your enterprise, there are many benefits your business stands to gain from utilizing ERP technology. The following are just a few major reasons to invest in ERP Philippines-based companies should take note of.

Streamlined Operations

Keeping a business up and running from day to day requires a large number of individuals, resources, and processes to work in harmony. Business leaders often have their hands full overseeing regular operations across finance, human resources, sales and marketing, inventory, and a host of other departments. If they have to devote so much time and effort to keeping the company’s regular activities smooth and stable, they may struggle in shifting focus towards future growth and meeting long-term goals.

Many ERP systems are designed expressly to consolidate essential business functions into one stable, reliable system. Connecting and integrating the most important parts of your company’s operations allows your departments to communicate and coordinate more easily. It also allows them to share accurate, detailed information in real time.

Enhanced Productivity

Keeping track of your financials is an absolute must for any business, and it’s especially so for businesses that are experiencing a period of growth. Your company will need comprehensive and accurate data records to measure success and evaluate business targets. This becomes more difficult to do as your business grows and its transactions increase both in number and in complexity. Data entry tasks and calculations, in particular, become more vulnerable to human error the more they pile up.

More integrated operations can also provide a much-needed boost to your company’s operational efficiency. ERP systems let you automate many processes that would otherwise require manual labor, allowing your business to spend less time on everyday tasks and reducing the risk of human error incidents. The additional bandwidth gained from this frees up your workers for more complex, value-adding, and fulfilling work that will do more to improve the company’s bottom line.

Real-Time Data

Contemporary customers demand more flexibility and responsiveness from the businesses they patronize than ever before. A great many of them expect you to be able to handle their concerns or meet their needs in real time, which is challenging if not impossible without access to quality data.

In today’s increasingly volatile business environment, data is considered an especially precious resource for enterprises of any size and industry. Comprehensive, timely data enables organizations to make accurate forecasts and educated business decisions that are necessary to meet company goals and outpace competitors. Luckily, ERP systems are equipped with advanced data collection and analytics tools to ensure that you have access to all the information you need, when you need it.

ERP’s analytics capabilities also facilitate more efficient reporting and compliance for your business. The software isn’t only able to gather necessary data but can also summarize and present it in an organized, ready-to-analyze form. All financial statements, expense and income reports, and other important documents can also be stored securely within the system for easy access, editing, duplication, or dissemination to authorized parties.

High Scalability

Expansion is the eventual goal of many small- to medium-sized business owners, many of whom dream of growing their customer base exponentially and bringing in record-breaking profits. As your business expands, however, your operational procedures will also undoubtedly grow more complex. You’ll also likely be processing a higher volume of transactions and performing a greater number of tasks per day, such as onboarding new customers, hiring more staff, introducing new workflows, and so on.

The right ERP system will be able to grow along with your company, enabling you to navigate periods of great transition and change with ease. You’ll be able to reconfigure, augment, and otherwise alter the software to accommodate your organization’s changing needs without compromising the system’s efficiency or the quality of its output.

Significant Savings on IT and Training Costs

The steep upfront cost of purchasing, customizing, and implementing many ERP systems is one major reason businesses hesitate to invest in the software. The truth, however, is that businesses that employ an ERP system stand to save much more in the long run than businesses that don’t. This is because upgrading and maintaining a single unified system will cost you significantly less overall than working with multiple fragmented solutions. You’ll also only have to train your staff to use the one system instead of teaching them how to use several separate programs, which will save you valuable time as well as money.

Though ERP systems are often a weighty upfront investment, you can expect to see your company’s efficiency, productivity, flexibility, and intelligence improve significantly right out of the gate. These improvements will, in turn, empower your organization to stay ahead of competitors, meet customer needs, and fulfill business goals.

Photo by fauxels from Pexels

The post 5 Reasons Why Your Fintech Company Should Invest in an ERP System appeared first on FinTech Ranking.

Read more: Manila Bulletin

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\The round also featured strong repeat participation from previous VC investors Sequoia India, Point72 Ventures, Insignia, iGlobe, Alpha JWC, Citius, Blauwpark, and Kraft. Tonik will use the Series B funding to accelerate the growth of its digital bank in the Philippines. 

Read more: PRNewswire

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