Tonik forays into consumer loans

MANILA, Philippines — Purely digital and branchless bank Tonik has expanded its services in the Philippines by launching a pioneering quick loan product on its platform, marking the digital bank’s entry into the deeply underserved consumer-lending segment.

Greg Krasnov, founder and chief executive officer of Tonik, said the country’s first private neobank, aims to establish itself as one of the market leaders in the consumer loan segment via Quick Loans.

“Traditional banks require the applicant to have credit history to approve a loan while more than 80 percent of the Filipinos don’t have any credit history.  As a result, the Filipino consumers are forced to borrow from friends and family or from payday loan providers at very high interest. This damages their long-term financial stability and undermines their future, and we think this is unfair,” Krasnov said.

Tonik estimates that there is $100 billion of potential market for consumer loans in the Philippines, of which 90 percent is currently unserved.

Tonik’s game-changing all-digital Quick Loan is designed to serve the vast unbanked and underbanked Filipino middle class with a quick and affordable bank credit proposition.

“Our plan is to change this balance and make affordable loans accessible for majority of Filipinos,” Krasnov said.

The new loan product has mass-market appeal as it does not require the client to have a prior credit history or a pre-existing bank account at another bank, relying instead on world-class alternative credit scoring technologies for credit decision.