A very different conference

This was a different conference, a very different conference, and you felt it as soon as you entered. Welcomed by loud drummers and flashing lights, I had sudden flashbacks of my youth at Glastonbury festival.

This was the big event, years of hard work by the local team to get us to this point, the launch of our co-op banking wallet at MASS-SPECC Cooperative Development Center 54th CO-OP Leaders Congress. The pressure was high, we were there to convince the 200+ co-op bank boards to digital transform and to move their members onto our Pinoy co-op wallet.

Our banking as a service model, where we supply the license, tech and operations was ready to go, and the contracts signed with MASS-SPECC. Now we had to demonstrate the value of the platform, how the end users can receive their salary into the wallet, check their balance, do cash in and out and pay bills. If we get this right, we get access to all of MASS-SPECCs 3.4 million members.

What was I going to present that would help convince these board members agree to roll out the app to their own co-ops?

In my view, when you sell, you should sell yourself first, your company second and your product last.

So I started with my favourite subject, me ??

I talked them through my career and some of the lessons I had learned (mainly by making mistakes in fairness) – Games development, Dunn and Bradstreet, Microsoft, Mastercard, DBS Bank, PictureWealth and finally Peppermint Innovation Limited . Demonstrating I had worked in innovation roles across gaming, data, tech, payment, banking, wealth and fintech companies.

It’s always good to start strong and this is what I was hoping to achieve without coming across as the “big I am”, but if done humbly, it’s a great asset to immediately get the audience taking you seriously in a market you haven’t spoken to before.

Then I posed the question – “I bet you are wondering with my career, why am I here?”

I got a several nods of agreement and a few chuckles. I mentioned that I had just flown in from the jungles of Sumatra (technically just one jungle), where on the weekends I had built Hotel Orangutan, my non-profit hotel giving local villagers jobs and education, while also bringing awareness to the endangered Orangutans. I spoke about my fondness for the southeast Asian region and how when I see a problem where I can help improve peoples’ lives, I will commit and deliver, that’s why I am here today and that’s why I joined Peppermint.

I continued, co-op banking and microfinance are one of the most important parts of the financial ecosystem. Think of it this way, if people have money, then financial institutions magically appear to help manage those cash flows, but if people don’t have money, then what? This only gets solved via affirmative action by dedicated locals trying to better their communities’ lives, co-op banking.

But this industry is under threat, mainly from two directions, banks, and fintech’s.

Historically, banks high cost of tech and operations has inhibited their entry into this market, but with digital transformations underway and new digital banks launching, this is now a profitable sector for them. On the fintech side we are seeing SEA Money, Maya and GCash taking share of payments and lending.

Co-ops have a natural defence advantage, even though they are small, they stick together like a shoal of fish and together, the 15 million co-op members in the Philippines, make them one of the largest “banks”, they are second in market for savings accounts, a big fish indeed!

The second line of defence is to become more bank like, improve your operations by accelerating the credit scoring and loan management capability (lending is a large part of the co-op model). Then look to offer financial education packaged with micro investments and pensions to deliver longer term financial resilience.

This is important because in southeast Asia, the lifespan of people has dramatically improved over the last 20 years and governments will struggle to cope with this booming generational wave as they age. Providing pensions with financial education we hope to improve their entire financial lives.

Their third defence is digitisation.

As most of us know, digitisation is inevitable, I took the Indian ecommerce giant, FlipKart as an example. When they first started, many customers didn’t trust them, they would only pay cash on delivery, even though they had a card or wallet.

They wanted to physically see and touch the goods before payment.

On the third order, they would use their debit card, now they had trust in the system, now most transactions are done using debit cards or wallets

I was very direct (not uncommon for me): - “Your members will get digitised, you must decide whether it’s done by you or by someone else, now is the time to start that journey.

With the support of MASS-SPECC and our Peppermint team, I feel we succeeded.

Two-thirds of the room downloaded the app and we already have numerous co-ops who have agreed to a roll-out, we are busily training their agent locations.

It’s a fantastic journey we are on, and the potential is huge with 15 million co-ops members in the country. We view ourselves not just as a technology partner, but also a business partner, with a mission to bring financial education and fair financial products to the rural communities and to enable co-op banking to thrive in an age of digital disruption!