Salmon Captures Economics Through Bank Ownership

Owning the bank lets Salmon turn a one time loan into a full balance sheet business. Instead of paying a partner bank for deposits, account infrastructure, and regulated lending capacity, Salmon can book the loan, fund part of it with its own deposits, collect servicing income in the app, and then keep customer balances in savings and time deposits on the same institution.

• The clearest economic benefit is funding cost. Salmon Bank grew deposits from PHP 571 million at end 2024 to PHP 2.83 billion at end 2025, and management explicitly frames deposit growth as a way to replace more expensive wholesale funding and improve net interest margin.
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• This is the same playbook that has helped Maya scale. Maya combines payments, credit, and banking inside one regulated stack, and reported PHP 68 billion of deposits by end 2025. The difference is that Salmon starts from installment lending and is using deposits to deepen margins and customer lifetime value from that credit wedge.
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• The tradeoff is operational weight. Salmon has had to inject new capital into the bank, rebrand the acquired Rural Bank of Sta. Rosa as Salmon Bank, and build governance and infrastructure that satisfy BSP requirements. A partner bank model would be lighter, but it would also leave a meaningful share of economics with the sponsor bank.
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The next step is for Salmon to turn deposits from a funding tool into a habit product. If more borrowers start using Salmon for payroll balances, savings, and term deposits, the company can lower funding costs further, price credit more aggressively, and compete less like a point solution lender and more like a compact digital bank.