Trusting Social, a leading AI-driven credit scoring and digital identity company, celebrated its 7th anniversary in the Philippines with an exclusive event titled “7 Years Forward: Powering Financial Inclusion with AI.”
The milestone gathered key stakeholders from the banking, fintech, and regulatory sectors for an evening of cross-industry discussions and collaborations on building a more inclusive and secure financial ecosystem for the country.
“We needed a moment to connect, not just through business, but as people who believe in the same future,” said Johnny Escaler, CEO of Trusting Social Philippines. “Our mission has always been to tackle one of the most fundamental problems of finance — powering financial inclusion with AI. And having worked in this space for years, the work we do has never been as critical as it is right now.”
Marking its 7th anniversary, the company reflected on its mission of combating financial fraud in the Philippines. Trusting Social provides a full credit risk and fraud prevention service, ensuring financial inclusion is accessible, safe, and fraud-free for Filipinos.
“Financial inclusion is the fuel that ignites economic progress for millions. And in the end, it’s the goal of everything we build,” said Escaler in his opening speech.
The celebration featured a fireside chat titled “The Frontline Defense: Combating Money Muling and Fostering a Secure Financial Ecosystem.” The session was moderated by journalist and business news anchor, Rico Hizon, and brought together prominent executives from major financial institutions to discuss the growing threat of money muling and the collective actions needed to safeguard Filipino consumers. The distinguished panelists included Shailesh Baidwan, Group President and Co-Founder of Maya Bank; Ramon Del Rosario, Head of the Consumer Business Sector at Metrobank; Miguel Geronilla (Migs), Chief Information Security Officer of GCash; Siddhartha Kohli, Head of Partnerships and Country Director for India at Trusting Social; Roel Tan, Chief Executive Officer of BancNet; and Bharath Vasudevan, Partner and Director at BCG.
Spotlight on the industry’s shared battle against financial crime
Money muling, the illegal exploitation of personal accounts to transfer criminals’ proceeds, is one of the biggest current challenges of cyberspace in the Philippines. The panel discussed recent developments in deceptive practices, regulators’ efforts through the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), and the need for cooperation between all sectors to take down more organized crime groups.
“We’ve seen this before, fraud often gets tackled later. Having seen the same analytics done on 200 million accounts in Vietnam, wherein 86 million accounts were fraudulent with fake identities” said Siddhartha Kohli, Head of Partnerships at Trusting Social. “That is a sense of the scale of fraudulent activity. And this was with synthetic IDs, we don’t know what was happening in transactions with real identities.”
He also highlighted the fine balance between security and the user experience. “Even if fraud represents a small percentage overall, customers may need to accept that a bit of friction in their experience is in their best interest. It protects them and strengthens the entire financial system,” Kohli added.
Finally, Kohli called attention to the role of regulators in tackling systemic fraud. “In India, the regulator took a centralized approach — developing an algorithm that every bank could deploy to detect mule accounts. It’s an example of how regulators can enable a unified response to fraud that cuts across the entire ecosystem” he said.”
The panel also brought up practical methodology on how corporations can steward innovation, compliance, and customer protection, in the context of rising AI and digital transformation in financial services.
The next phase of AI-powered fraud protection
Trusting Social also provided a glimpse into its product roadmap, detailing the next phase of AI-powered solutions for fraud prevention and financial inclusion.
The enhanced Trust Insights 2.0 now leverages richer alternative data, including behavioral and location signals, to provide more accurate credit assessments and improve contactability. Critically, a new partnership with Kayana will extend the company’s reach, enabling it to score up to 95% of the adult Filipino population.
The expanded Identity & Fraud Prevention Solutions (TrustVision) portfolio adds direct government ID validation, SME (KYB) authentication, eKYC with e-signatures, and specialized AML screening. For transaction security, the company is replacing OTPs with a new Facial Biometric Transaction Validation system. This security initiative is bolstered by the Advanced Fraud Prevention Suite, which includes the Money Muling Score and Fraud Database to proactively identify organized crime, and the unique Selfie Score for extracting credit signals from a single photo.
“If fraudsters are organized, we need to be organized. If OTP verification is failing, then we need to find biometric authentication,” said Jaideep Lakshminarayanan, CFO of Trusting Social. “The market is evolving, the fraudsters are evolving—we need to evolve as well.”
