Agenda

OPENING KEYNOTE

Is Philippine Finance Moving Fast Enough for the Decade It’s In? 

• 115 million people. Median age of 25. Some of the highest mobile usage in the world. The ingredients for a generational financial transformation are already in place — the question is whether institutions will lead it or absorb its consequences
• The BSP’s Digital Payments Transformation Roadmap targets 80% of adult Filipinos holding a formal account by 2028. That mandate demands a pace most institutions have not yet committed to
• This session sets the stakes for both days: what the Philippines can become, what is already in motion, and what still stands between ambition and execution

What a Philippine Central Bank Digital Currency Would Actually Change

• Over 130 countries representing 98% of global GDP are exploring central bank digital currencies — several are already live. The Philippines is watching, but the window to shape rather than inherit this shift is narrowing
• A Philippine Central Bank Digital Currency would alter payment settlement, monetary policy transmission, and the cost of financial access for the 53 million Filipinos still outside the formal system
• This session cuts through the speculation: what it means for the 94 million users already on electronic wallet platforms, what banks must prepare for operationally, and what the regulatory roadmap realistically looks like

Is Your Core Banking System a Foundation — or a Ceiling?

• The average legacy core in Southeast Asia is over 20 years old. Every product, channel, and integration built on top of it inherits its constraints — batch processing, closed architecture, and a cost-to-change that slows everything
• Cloud-native, API-first core architecture is not a technology upgrade. It is a strategic decision about what the institution can build, partner, and deploy over the next decade — and how fast
• This session examines how banks are executing phased core migration without compromising stability, and what the architecture looks like when the core becomes a growth platform rather than a constraint

AI Beyond the Pilot: What Enterprise Deployment in Banking Actually Requires

• 85% of artificial intelligence projects never leave the pilot stage. In Philippine banking, the pattern is familiar: proofs of concept that never scale beyond the team and budget that initiated them
• The institutions closing this gap share three things: governed data infrastructure, a model risk framework that satisfies regulators, and executive accountability that sits above — not inside — the technology function
• This session examines what enterprise-scale deployment actually requires, and how banks are running artificial intelligence across credit, fraud, customer service, and automation simultaneously without losing governance control

Hyper-Personalisation at Scale: Serving Every Customer as an Individual, Not a Segment

• Serving customers from segments was the best the industry could do a decade ago. With real-time transaction data, behavioural signals, and predictive models, serving individuals is no longer aspirational — it is a product decision
• The institutions winning this race are anticipating needs before customers articulate them, across every channel, in milliseconds — without compromising the privacy and consent frameworks that make it sustainable
• This session examines how to build personalisation infrastructure that scales, and why the gap between institutions that have done it and those that have not is accelerating every quarter

Are You Actually Transforming — or Just Digitising?

• Digital transformation spending in Asia Pacific banking exceeded USD 50 billion in 2024. A significant portion funded better interfaces on top of unchanged architecture, culture, and operating models. That is not transformation
• The institutions on the other side of genuine transformation share a pattern: they reimagined the business model, operating model, and culture simultaneously — and held that commitment through the resistance
• This panel draws the line clearly, examines what it costs to build an institution that is structurally different, and names what separates genuine transformation from expensive digitisation

CEO Agenda: Institution-Defining Decisions That Nobody Warned You About

• The average bank CEO tenure in Southeast Asia is under five years. In that window, they make decisions on technology, talent, and transformation that will outlast them — often under conditions the board presentation did not anticipate.
• Build versus buy versus partner is rarely as clean in practice as on a strategy slide. Neither is the governance-innovation tension, or the moment the roadmap meets organisational reality.
• This fireside goes behind the strategy deck: what leading a financial institution in 2026 actually requires, and what the executives who get it right do differently.

Open Finance: Who Owns the Customer When the Data Flows Freely?

• The BSP’s open finance framework is live. When financial data moves freely between institutions with consent, the one that uses it best — not necessarily the one holding the account — wins the relationship
• API architectures, consent platforms, and data governance frameworks are no longer compliance tools. They are the competitive infrastructure that determines who leads the next era of Philippine banking
• This session examines what strategic open finance participation looks like: the commercial models that work, the liability frameworks that matter, and the trust equation that determines whether openness becomes a growth engine or a vulnerability

The Infrastructure Gap Standing Between Digital Banking and Every Filipino

• Internet penetration in the Philippines sits at approximately 73% — but the distribution is deeply uneven. Where financial exclusion is most acute, connectivity is also least reliable and most expensive
• Real-time processing, AI-driven workloads, and mobile-first services assume infrastructure consistency that does not exist across the archipelago. That makes connectivity not a technology question but a financial inclusion one
• This session examines how financial institutions can architect for connectivity variability and what serving the underconnected genuinely requires in system design and offline capability

Digital Lending at Scale: Extending Credit to More People Without Compromising Underwriting Quality

• Digital lending has brought formal credit to millions of Filipinos for the first time — but non-performing loan ratios in the sector hit 7.8% in 2024, nearly double the system average. Growth without discipline has a predictable cost.
• AI-driven scoring and alternative data sources — mobile behaviour, utility payments, social commerce — can assess creditworthiness for thin-file borrowers. The question is whether institutions are deploying them responsibly.
• This session examines the underwriting frameworks and regulatory guardrails that make extending credit further possible, without producing the portfolio damage that irresponsible scale reliably delivers.

Banking as a Service: Opportunity, Obligations, and What It Takes to Do It Right

• Banking as a Service is projected to generate USD 2.2 trillion in global transaction value by 2028. In the Philippines, the model is accelerating as non-financial platforms seek embedded capabilities without the burden of a banking licence
• For licensed institutions providing this infrastructure, the commercial opportunity is real — but the BSP holds them responsible for what happens in their name, regardless of which platform delivers the product
• This session examines the governance, API architecture, and commercial frameworks that make Banking as a Service sustainable — and the liability realities institutions are underestimating as they move to capture the opportunity

Cyber Resilience at Board Level: Protecting Financial Institutions in an Evolving Threat Landscape

• The BSP reported a 118% increase in cyber incidents across supervised Philippine financial institutions between 2022 and 2024. Ransomware, business email compromise, and AI-generated fraud are not tail risks — they are the operating environment
• The perimeter no longer exists. Every cloud migration, vendor relationship, and API integration extends the attack surface. Sophisticated actors are already inside systems that have not yet detected them
• This panel examines genuine cyber resilience at board level: the incident response playbooks that hold under pressure, the crisis communication discipline that protects trust, and the recovery architecture that determines whether a breach is managed or existential

Payments Modernisation: The Fast, Inclusive, and Interoperable Infrastructure Philippine Finance Still Needs

• InstaPay and PESONet have moved real-time domestic payments forward — but cross-border costs still average 5 to 7%, among Southeast Asia’s highest, despite USD 38.3 billion in inbound remittances in 2023
• The BSP targets 70% of retail transaction volume to be digital by 2025. Getting there requires infrastructure that is fast and accessible — from micro-payments in rural communities to high-value institutional transfers
• This session examines the next phase: cross-border interoperability, micro-transaction infrastructure for underserved segments, and the settlement reforms that close the gaps current infrastructure leaves behind

The Branch Isn't Dead. The Old Model Is: Reinventing Retail Banking for the Digital Customer

• Philippine bank branches declined roughly 12% between 2020 and 2024 — yet 47% of Filipinos still cite a branch as their primary touchpoint for complex transactions. The channel is evolving, not disappearing
• GoTyme, Maya, and Tonik are not competing on rates. They are competing on experience — speed, simplicity, and the sense that the institution actually understands the customer. Established banks are losing that ground to apps built in three years
• This panel examines how retail banks defend the relationship in a market where challengers are resetting expectations daily — and how to hold personalisation, privacy, compliance, and competitive positioning together simultaneously