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Trusting Social Philippines has integrated its AI-powered telco credit score into the underwriting engine of Datung, a Singapore- and Manila-based microfinance company. The integration lets Datung approve loans in minutes for Filipino micro-entrepreneurs who have no borrowing history to show a bank.
The integration covers unsecured personal loans and microfinance. Applicants are assessed through alternative credit scoring rather than financial statements, which most micro-enterprises do not keep.
The timing matters. Filipinos are starting businesses faster than the credit system can document them. The Department of Trade and Industry recorded nearly 850,000 business name registrations in the first eight months of 2026, up eight percent year on year, and 726,386 of those were new. A business that opened this year, by definition, has nothing for a lender to look up.
The result is a financing gap that grows along with the country’s entrepreneurial boom instead of shrinking. Micro, small and medium enterprises made up 99.63% of the Philippines’ 1.24 million registered businesses in 2024 and generated about two-thirds of their employment, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority. Yet MSME loans account for under five percent of the banking system’s total loan portfolio, according to the latest Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas data. That is less than half the 10% benchmark set under the Magna Carta for MSMEs.
“Without a formal bank history, new businesses are usually locked out from day one,” said Johnny Escaler, Chief Executive Officer of Trusting Social Philippines. “But having no paper trail doesn’t mean someone isn’t reliable. Partnering with Datung turns that daily track record into a usable score they need to back deserving small business owners who don’t have formal credit histories.”
Instead of financial statements, Trusting Social’s alternative credit scoring models read behavioral signals: how consistently a person pays, how stable their activity is, and the patterns they have built over years. The models return a score in seconds, which Datung’s engine uses to make the loan decision. Trusting Social has operated in the Philippines since 2019 and has scored more than 110 million Filipinos.
“We think of underwriting as a learning system, not a checklist,” said Kasper Abildgaard Svendsen, Chief Executive Officer of Datung. “Our AI agents combine alternative data, e-wallet cash flows and insights from our field officers into a single view of each borrower, and every repayment feeds back into our models, alongside the discipline of our group lending model. Trusting Social’s telco score is a valuable addition to that picture. More signal going in means sharper decisions coming out, and that advantage compounds with every borrower we serve.”
“We built Datung around small groups, training and officers who visit borrowers where they work,” said Charan Uttamchandani, Chief Operating Officer of Datung. “The scoring does not replace any of that. It points us toward more of the people worth visiting.” Borrowers approved this way also begin building a formal repayment record from their first loan. That record is the credit history banks require, and the one thing a new business cannot manufacture.
“A credit score does not fix an economy, it does take away one reason a lender says no,” Escaler said. Each loan that gets repaid builds a permanent credit history, meaning the next institution won’t have to guess. It’s about getting that first door open so viable businesses can keep growing.”
