"For the General Manager role in a tech company, you have to be very comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and changing priorities because there are a lot of stakeholders. If you're part of an international tech company, there's the global head office, and the regional head office that all have ideas and perspectives on how to do things, and you need to be able to listen to that, pick the right things that would work for your market, and at the same time, put forward what you think would really make sense. You have to be somebody who's willing to manage multiple stakeholders and be comfortable with the ambiguity and uncertainty, which leads to ever-changing priorities and direction, and at the same time, have your own vision of how you would want to move the organization and the business forward." - Raffy Montemayor
"When we founded Salmon, we expected the unsecured consumer lending business to grow to around 30 billion, with some expecting it to be 50 billion. But now, there are certain players, including ourselves, who expect it to reach 100 billion by 2030, so the opportunity is massive and it's like a land grab game where you need to be present. You need to provide a great customer experience and opportunities. It's also a young population, and in the next 10 years, there are going to be like 20 million people entering the workforce for the first time. These people were born with the internet, with a mobile phone in their hand, and access to the internet from day one. They're going to expect everything in their lives to be on their smartphone and they’ll be the main consumers of financial services as well. And so that's an opportunity that the existing banks are not trying to address." - Raffy Montemayor
"Being customer-centric is very important. Customers have to be the center of what you do and not profit. Profit is something that comes as you succeed. The use of technology, being able to use that to operate more efficiently and provide customer services more efficiently are big differentiators as well for financial services companies. When building a profitable lending engine, you need to make sure you're able to use the deposits of people to advert value that lend that out profitably, and then be able to pay good interest rates and then you earn from the margin. That is quite key because what we see in fintech right now, especially in the Philippines, everybody's doing e-wallets, which is a very low-margin business and it’s quite difficult to be sustainable and make money in the long term." - Raffy Montemayor
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on country general manager learnings, classifieds insights, and being a Philippines fintech founder.
Keywords: Raffy Montemayor, Country General Manager Learnings, Classifieds Insights, Philippines Fintech Founder, Philippines, FinTech, Founder Story
