Established in 2017, SAVii is a market leader in salary lending, with a loan book of over P3 billion. The purchase price was not disclosed.
Salary loans are a type of personal loan offered by financial institutions to people with steady income from employment.
Digital banks are the industry’s upstarts. Their aim is to bring tens of millions of unbanked Filipinos into the traditional financial system since their expansion is not constrained by physical and costly branches.
While these banks have rapidly expanded deposits by offering better interest rates than their traditional counterparts, achieving profitability has been a struggle due to loan losses from their aggressive lending activities.
According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, just two out of the six digital banks are profitable mainly due to their higher level of soured loans.
Given its dominant presence in the salary loan segment, SAVii's offers significant value to GoTyme, which reached 2.3 million clients last January. These borrowers typically have stable income sources, increasing the likelihood of timely debt payments.
SAVii was founded by its CEO Liam Grealish with Benoit Portoleau-Balloy and Javier Frasseto. Previously known as Uploan, the company’s customer base spans over 500,000 employees across 150 of the biggest Philippine corporations.
GoTyme intends to integrate SAVii credit products with its lending and payroll platform. By doing so, it hopes to “capture a significant market share of the employed population in the Philippines”.
GoTyme earlier rolled out an earned wage access feature to employees of selected companies. This allows employees to access their pay everyday.
Miguel R. Camus has been a reporter covering various domestic business topics since 2009.
