Consumer financial technology company Salmon secured a $20 million debt facility from U.S. emerging-markets specialist investment firm Argentem Creek Partners, enabling Salmon to further scale its lending operations across the Philippines. Building on investor interest in the debt placement, Salmon will expand its loan book, leveraging its existing point-of-sale and cash loan lending, and will launch new products later this year.
According to Salmon, the debt transaction set a new benchmark as the largest ever debt financing for a Series A tech company in the Philippines.
Salmon was founded in July 2022 and was set up by a group of fintech and financial services industry veterans led by Pavel Fedorov, George Chesakov and Raffy Montemayor. The fintech company launched its first credit product four months after inception and has been delivering new product launches every three months since.
“We are tremendously humbled by the strong investor interest, as well as Argentem Creek’s support for Salmon’s vision to create the best credit-led fintech in Southeast Asia and for making financial services more accessible to all,” Montemayor said. “We especially want to highlight Argentem Creek’s focus on building a win-win partnership with Salmon and believe that there will be many options for extending our work together as Salmon maintains its rapid pace of development in Southeast Asia. We see this milestone as a testament to Salmon’s potential, as well as the market’s trust in our vision and business model. This transaction also conveys a message of hope to many young and aspiring Filipinos, highlighting to them the incredible opportunities that the global investment community sees in the Philippines today. Financial inclusion will be an important driver of sustainable economic growth in the Philippines, and Salmon is committed to continuing to play a key role in this transformation.”
“Argentem Creek Partners is delighted to deliver an important component of Salmon’s capital structure,” Maarten Terlouw, president and co-CIO of Argentem Creek Partners, said. “We are a long-term value-oriented investor and are excited to support Salmon in its ambitious drive to expand financial inclusion across the region, as well as to provide best-in-class customer service and make lending more accessible to consumers in the region. We look forward to working together with Salmon’s world class investors, including Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund ADQ, one of Europe’s top venture investors and a group of prominent local investors, as well as Salmon’s top notch management team, to deliver long-term value in the Philippines.”
“Consumer lending is one of the fastest growing segments in Southeast Asia,” Daniel Chapman, CEO and founder of Argentem Creek Partners, said. “We are convinced that the new generation of credit-focused fintechs like Salmon have a tremendous opportunity and that Argentem Creek could play an important role in driving forward financial inclusion in these exciting markets.”
