AI loan origination rebuilt for a Philippines digital lender.
A ~$60M loan-book PH digital lender replaced a six-month-stalled overhaul with four sequenced Software Factory cycles. Live in 12 weeks.
Photo: Unsplash. Client name anonymised per NDA.
Six months in, the in-house overhaul had shipped nothing.
The client — a Manila-based digital lender focused on consumer and SME unsecured loans — had spent six months and roughly ₱18M on an in-house origination overhaul. The build was stalled: scope kept expanding, a CTO had left mid-project, and the existing system was bleeding applicants to fintech competitors who decided in minutes, not hours.
The CEO wanted three things from the next attempt: a fixed timeline, a fixed scope, and ship-then-iterate cycles instead of a 12-month big-bang. Most AI companies in the Philippines they had spoken to bid the work as a 9-month T&M engagement. Xamun bid it as four 21-day cycles with sign-off gates between each.
A Philippines AI software development company that ships in 21 days, not 21 months.
The Manila Software Factory is structurally different from a typical PH IT services bench. Each cycle has a fixed scope, a fixed delivery date and a working software output. Cycles compose into a larger build; nothing gets bundled into a vague "Phase 2 — TBD". For a CEO who had just lost six months to scope creep, this was the deciding factor.
The second deciding factor: the London-side XI team produced a one-page business case before scope sign-off, anchored to a specific origination-volume KPI. The CEO had a clear number to commit to internally — not "AI will help us grow".
Four 21-day cycles. Manila-led build.
Mobile-first application capture with document OCR (IDs, payslips, ITRs). LLM-assisted document validation. Replaced the existing 14-field manual data-entry workflow.
Affordability + risk model + BSP-aligned audit trail. AI-driven credit decisioning with explainable reasoning. Underwriter override dashboard for edge cases.
Integration with the lender's existing core banking + GCash/InstaPay disbursement rails. AML/KYC sweep on every approved application. Audit log per transaction.
PlayStudio dashboards for the CEO, COO and Compliance Officer. Live KPI tracking against the Cycle 0 business case. Shadow run for 2 weeks, then 100% cutover.
What actually moved.
Median application-to-decision. Approved-loan-to-disbursement: same-day for ~92% of applicants.
Month-on-month new originations Q1 post-launch. CEO's Cycle-0 business-case target was +22%.
90-day default held within the lender's BSP-aligned tolerance band. No risk drift in the first 6 months.
Underwriter team reduced touch on the 78% deterministic applications; capacity refocused on disputed cases.
~$95k total. Vs $400k+ for the stalled in-house build.
Four 21-day cycles, fixed-priced. Total contracted value: ~$95k (~₱5.4M). The stalled in-house overhaul had already cost the lender roughly $310k with nothing shipped. Xamun shipped a working production system for less than a third of that, in 12 weeks.
In-house build stalled? Talk to Manila.
The Software Factory specialises in restart engagements where a previous build has not shipped. Half-day Discovery, fixed-priced cycles, shipping software from day 22.