- Case study Cantilan Bank
APIX helps Cantilan Bank to be the first bank in Philippines to fully adopt a cloud-based core banking system
- Underbanked communities served100
- Mobile banking app (iCAN app)1
- Impactful financial institution and fintech partnership1
About Company
Bank | Philippines | Digitalisation of services | Marketplace with Sandbox
Cantilan Bank (CANBNK), headquartered in Cantilan, Southeast Philippines, operates 46 branches across 12 provinces in Eastern Mindanao and Visayas. It caters to an area with poverty levels twice the national average and limited access to financial services. End of 2020, CANBNK's client base reached 130,000, reflecting its progress and outreach.
The Opportunity
How can the private sector, a government and regulatory body, and an international development partner work together to help speed up financial inclusion in the Philippines?
Financial inclusion in the Philippines is a prevalent issue – with only 27% of Filipinos having a bank account in rural areas in 2017. Geographical distribution was also uneven, with an estimation of over 90% of total domestic deposits and 97% originated from 27 provinces with high access, comprising just a third of all Filipino provinces and none of the provinces where CANBNK have a presence in.
Financial inclusion for underbanked individuals Improving the integration of the substantial unbanked or underserved Filipino population into the formal financial system will mitigate vulnerability and risk for these individuals, causing an overall positive impact on the economy.
Financial institutions to stay competitive For rural banks like CANBNK to be more competitive, they needed to raise the rate of financial inclusion to reach out to this large and untapped target group, with more accessibility to banking products to these remote areas.
The Solution
CANBNK ran a hackathon on APIX Platform to advance its digital initiatives in 2020 despite the constraints created by the global pandemic.
How APIX helped CANBNK to speed up digital transformation:
One platform to manage them all APIX’s digital end-to-end platform ensured that CANBNK could use one seamless platform to source for fintech solution providers, to plug and play APIs, and judge and evaluate technical submissions with its judging modules via a hackathon.
API Integration on platform Tapping on the capabilities of APIX Platform, the bank successfully integrated an application programming interface (API) layer, allowing for additional third-party integrations from fintechs and enabling the development of a mobile application.
Experiment risk-free within APIX sandbox Being a rural bank with the same regulatory requirements as larger commercial banks, it was important for the bank to experiment and test in a secure environment like the APIX Sandbox. CANBNK was able to experiment in a controlled environment with external parties safely.
The Impact
Accelerated financial inclusion
With the help of APIX, CANBNK had quickened its integration and collaboration process with third-party fintech partners via APIs on the platform. APIX also helped to link CANBNK with Fintech partners, leading to the partnership with Geniusto, a fintech provider. This paved the way for the launch of their new mobile application (iCAN), to improve end users’ digital access. They could then focus on the commercial launch of mobile app to improve accessibility. With increased digitisation and the mobile app being able to reach more underserved communities in the Philippines, this led to accelerated financial inclusion.
“With the power of Application Programming Interface (API) enabled FinTechs on APIX™ such as Geniusto, we got a total game-changer to speed-up our digital launch and make iCAN a reality today. We will bank on the APIX ecosystem and methodology to further expand iCAN’s service offering and bring the best digital experience to our communities.”
