Tonik, the Philippines’ first digital-only neobank, has finished rolling out its new AI-driven credit decisioning system.
In simple terms, the bank now uses an entirely AI-powered setup to decide who gets approved for loans, how much they can borrow, and at what price, aiming to make the process faster, fairer, and more accurate.
Instead of relying only on traditional credit checks, Tonik’s new system pulls insights from over a thousand different signals. These include things like device behavior and repayment patterns, which help the bank get a clearer picture of a customer’s ability to pay. According to Tonik, this leads to more precise risk assessment and nearly double the predictive power of older scoring models.
“We rebuilt the decisioning engine around data and actionability,” said Biswa Banik, Tonik’s Chief Data Officer. “It helps us make decisions that are quicker and more personalized, allowing us to serve more customers responsibly.”
The bank has also introduced AI chat, voice tools, and back-office automations to streamline operations.
Over the last three years, Tonik grew its loan portfolio tenfold while reducing its operations staff by over 20%. The company says its AI systems are expected to save more than US$20 million in operating costs in the next three years.
“AI is giving us tangible savings — not hype,” said Chief Operations Officer Tomasz Borowski. “It lets us scale without constantly adding more people.”
The bank reports strong momentum: loan portfolio and revenue have both been growing at over 300% annualized rates. Over the next three years, Tonik aims to grow another 10× by expanding its use of AI across products, channels, and customer segments.
With the Philippines’ unsecured lending market estimated at around US$40 billion, Tonik believes its AI-first approach puts it in a solid position to serve more Filipinos while keeping its risk in check.
