The year is 2019. Mila Bedrenets, a fintech marketing exec with two decades of experience building companies from the ground up across markets, gets a call from a familiar voice. It’s Greg Krasnov, a founder she has worked with twice previously, first on a bank in Ukraine and second on a solar energy fintech in Southeast Asia. He’s inviting her to join him on his next venture: Tonik, the first of its kind digital bank in the Philippines. 

A trip to Manila and five years later, Mila has led the rapid evolution of the Philippines’ digital banking industry, specifically from a user experience perspective. 

Her work has introduced new ways of doing time deposits, processing loan applications, integrating generative AI, among other “micro-revolutions” that we talk about on this episode of On Call with Insignia. We see how these add up to a principled approach to innovation, driven by a simple question.

Timestamps

(00:00) Introducing Tonik’s Chief Growth Hacker;

(04:23) The One Question to Ask for Growth Hacking;

(16:03) Raising the Bar on Digital Banking;

(23:09) Why Mila joined Greg, for the third time;

About our guest

Mila Bedrenets is currently Chief Growth Hacker at Tonik. Mila is a seasoned banking and fintech executive with experience across multiple countries and continents. She was previously Deputy CEO at SolarHome, enabling pay-as-you-go solar for bottom-of-pyramid clients in Southeast Asia. She also led marketing for several banks in Eastern Europe, including being Head of Marketing at Platinum Bank in the early 2010s. 

Transcript

Introducing Tonik’s Chief Growth Hacker

Paulo: I just wanted to start things off with how you joined Tonik, and what was behind your decision, especially coming from your previous roles, to join Tonik. What were the first few days like?

Mila: Well, my join in Tonik was very simple. Greg came to Myanmar, where I was living at the time, and he said, “You should join Tonik.” Hmm, I’m not sure. I will go and check because the first time I signed the job offer to Myanmar with Greg, I never checked the country. And I said, no, I’m not making the same mistake twice.

I will go and check the Philippines first. So I went to the Philippines, and I fell in love with Manila. Now, it’s difficult to believe that, but actually, Manila really impressed me very much. Also, the whole ambition of it, like launching something so big and crazy. That’s the kind of challenge that I like.

Paulo: What was it about Manila that you really liked?

Mila: Surprisingly, the food. Because again, I was living in Myanmar by that time. So, compared to Myanmar, Manila was like Singapore.

I liked Manila for your malls, for the services you have. So on my scouting visit, I already did a piercing in my ear—the first thing! The amount of things, like how dynamic this city is, and how nice people are. Everyone speaks English, so you understand how nice they are. Myanmar people are also great, but since they don’t speak English, you most probably will never know that.

But in the Philippines, I saw such a sincere, positive attitude towards me, towards foreigners, towards each other. People are very polite, very nice, and helpful. And they actually sincerely want to help you with all the struggles you have when you arrive for the first time.

I was quite scared when I arrived because Manila had a questionable reputation—let’s put it this way—in the media. Straight away, in the airport, there were a couple of ladies who helped me because my phone died after a long trip from Myanmar. I couldn’t call Grab or anything, and there were just people helping me just for the sake of helping me. I was so deeply impressed with that. So yeah, probably the people.

Paulo: We’ll get back to that a little bit more in terms of how you get assimilated into the culture and how it impacts the way you do customer experience. But I wanted to ask, was customer experience sort of the first pitch for the role for you here at Tonik?

Mila: It was growth from the very beginning. Straight away, on my first business card, it was already Chief Growth Hacker. My scope was product, launching Tonik itself, designing the first product line, and growing the business, sales—everything.

Paulo: How would you, I guess, for people who—growth hacker isn’t a common title given to people—how would you describe that role, especially in the context of Tonik?

Mila: I think the context of Tonik is very important here. In modern digital, app-first organizations, there is no such hundred percent clear, black-and-white split between what different functions do.

It’s not the same as when I was working with Greg in Ukraine at Platinum Bank. We had sales, we had marketing, and there was a clear border of who does what. And there was another clear border with what the product team was doing.

But when your organization is so blended, especially in a startup, your role is not as defined because your growth will come from many different, sometimes small, sometimes big details. Fine-tune the process here. Launch the new audience there. Develop a new product or work with risks on one thing or with IT to make your application smoother.

It all comes together. A growth hacker is someone who is taking care of growth, which is not as obvious and not as easy to put into a table or Excel. It’s about addressing very different parts of the organization and business that will help you eventually reach your business target. And that can be in any kind of role or any kind of department across the company. 

The One Question to Ask for Growth Hacking

Paulo: Given that it’s a pretty wide scope, depending on how you approach things, I’m sure you have some principles you keep in mind. What are some of those principles when it comes to customer experience or growth hacking that you’ve developed over the years working with Tonik?

Mila: Definitely the data. I want things to be proven by data. If we are talking about growth opportunities, we need to look at the data and make sure it’s captured correctly. There shouldn’t be any biases or statistical errors in the data, and we must base our decisions on accurate data. We’ve had experiences where that wasn’t the case, and it was painful.

Second, I think my team would cry when I say this, but it’s about asking why. When you’re challenging the status quo and building something that’s never been done before, you inherit legacy practices from the market. For example, if you’re a bank, you’ll inevitably hire people who’ve worked at other banks, and they tend to operate as they always have. It’s not specific to product, sales, or marketing—it’s across all functions.

Asking why helped us eliminate many problems, troubles, and barriers for customers.

Paulo: How are those principles affected by Philippine culture? I was curious if that has any impact, especially based on what you’ve experienced.

Mila: There isn’t always a 100% match. We’ve noticed that people from other cultures aren’t always ready to ask why or challenge the status quo because of the traditional hierarchy in companies here. That’s something you have to navigate.

To address this, you need to hire the right people. During interviews, we ensure that candidates won’t be afraid to challenge someone higher-ranked or older if they see a better way. Not everyone is ready to do that, so it’s a key part of our hiring process, not just for me but for everyone at Tonik.

The second part is encouraging people to practice challenging the status quo and always aiming for the best customer outcomes. You have to show this behavior by example and offer lots of support because for many Filipinos, it’s a big shift in mindset.

It took us some time to teach our marketing team to ask questions like, Why did this happen? or What’s the reason behind this? We told them: We’re on the front line with customers, and if something went wrong, we need to know why.

We also worked with customer care to ensure these issues wouldn’t happen again. Gaining that voice within the company required significant support from management and the leadership team.

Paulo: This constant questioning of why—has it influenced any particular product or feature Tonik has released?

Mila: It’s in our DNA to do things differently, in ways that are better for customers. For example, when we were launching our first deposit product, we introduced time deposits.

The product managers initially told us that time deposits weren’t common in the Philippines and that people wouldn’t be interested. They said customers were used to savings accounts and wouldn’t go for time deposits because they’re not flexible.

Paulo: Yeah, especially the traditional ones.

Mila: Exactly. But as we kept asking why, we realized that the real issue was that the interest rates on time deposits were usually very low. Customers never saw time deposits as an investment tool or a way to earn with their savings. So, we launched them.

How we launched them was also important. At that time, the market wasn’t used to it, but now I’m very proud because the market shifted, and it shifted because of us. We disrupted the market, and other banks followed.

Paulo: Everyone else followed?

Mila: Yes, and I’m really proud of that because now Filipinos are benefiting from it.

When we launched time deposits, we were told that the interest rate should vary based on the deposit amount. Bigger deposits were supposed to earn higher interest. That didn’t make sense to me.

We said, No, people should have the same access to earning interest regardless of their income. They can start with ₱5,000 and earn the same rate as someone with millions. That’s fairer and better for Filipinos. It also worked better for us because we didn’t want to attract just 100 customers with millions of pesos. We wanted millions of customers with ₱5,000 each.

Paulo: Do you have any examples on the loan side?

Mila: Absolutely. When we developed our first loan flow, our head of risk initially wanted to ask 50 questions. We went through each one and asked, How will you use this question?

He said, Maybe I won’t use it now, but I might need it in the future. So, we cut it down—killing it, killing it, killing it—until we had only seven questions left.

We also looked at where we could pull data instead of asking customers for it. For example, we don’t need customers to enter their names if we’ve already seen their passport. We don’t need their age because we can pull that from their ID.

This optimization resulted in a very smooth loan flow. Today, customers can complete it in five minutes, and it’s still highly predictive for risk management because we pull relevant data from our existing systems.

Paulo: How about customer service? Can you talk about how the Gen AI chatbot came about and how it incorporates the principles you’ve mentioned?

Mila: Sure. The chatbot was a bit of a painful project.

Paulo: Why was it painful?

Mila: The way it’s sold in the market makes it seem easy—they say, Just integrate our solution, and you’ll have a fully functioning chatbot. But that’s not true at all. Integration is only the first step.

After that comes extensive analytics and training. Today, we have seven people training the chatbot. We even created a new role in the market: chatbot trainers, or as we call them, Pokemon trainers.

The chatbot has helped us significantly reduce operational expenses. We now serve customers more efficiently by following a simple rule: The easiest questions—like How do I check my balance?—consume most of your agents’ time.

By using the chatbot to handle these simple tasks, we free up 80% of our resources. This allows our agents to focus on more complex issues, improving the overall customer experience. Our maximum waiting time is now around three minutes.

Paulo: Do you see other Gen AI applications beyond customer service? Chatbots seem like an intuitive starting point.

Mila: Yes, definitely. Chatbots are just the beginning.

The next step could be fraud management. AI can help identify fraudulent behavior and authenticate customer identities. There have been many public cases of money theft in the Philippines, and proper AI-powered systems can prevent these incidents.

Risk management is another area. AI can predict loan defaults by analyzing patterns that humans might miss. As humans, we look for logical cause-and-effect relationships. AI doesn’t need to—it can connect seemingly unrelated data points.

Paulo: Like identifying outlier factors?

Mila: Exactly. AI might find a connection between something as random as the color of your screensaver and the probability of loan default. That’s the kind of insight AI can provide, and it’s something we couldn’t discover on our own.

Raising the Bar on Digital Banking

Paulo: You’ve dropped hints of it throughout our conversation so far, but can you draw the connection between improving customer experience and profitability, especially given Tonik’s focus these days on scaling its loan book?

Mila: With growth, there are two important things to reach your break-even: how much you grow and how much you spend. If your growth outpaces your expenses, you’re good. But if your expenses grow at the same rate, that’s obviously a problem.

AI helps us contain the growth of our costs while scaling the portfolio. For example, a customer care agent can only handle a certain number of customers before you need to hire more staff. If you exceed that capacity, you have to keep scaling headcount—not just in customer care, but also for underwriting, customer due diligence, and KYC.

Using AI, particularly chatbots, allows us to contain these costs. This way, our growth can eventually cover expenses from revenue. Optimization becomes key when you have access to data on customer behavior, revealing countless small opportunities for cost savings while maintaining high growth.

Paulo: I also want to talk about stability and security. How do you connect those with customer experience?

Mila: Exactly. For us, this kind of stability is non-negotiable. Let’s be honest—the banking experience and expectations in the Philippines aren’t the highest. But we never benchmark ourselves against the Philippines. I look at what NuBank is doing globally, checking their app experience and processes.

We apply high standards to ourselves. Stability is foundational for us. Honestly, the more I use other banking apps, the prouder I am of Tonik. We also rely on extensive customer feedback, with tools for social listening and well-tuned processes to act on every piece of feedback.

Every issue we catch is addressed promptly—sometimes within days. And it’s not just the customer care team resolving these problems; it’s a company-wide effort. We don’t just fix issues temporarily but apply permanent fixes, ensuring they won’t recur. That’s something we’ve worked hard to instill across IT and operations over the years.

Paulo: I’ve seen that firsthand. I was part of the Lighthouse group from the beginning, and when I was asked to join Tonik’s beta tester group, I saw how quickly issues were resolved.

One thing I wanted to touch on—you mentioned global benchmarks like NuBank. Given those benchmarks, what’s the next step for digital banking in the Philippines, beyond AI?

Mila: We need proper IDs—let’s start there. It’s not just digital banking; the entire banking system is being held back. Many Filipinos still don’t have verifiable IDs, which prevents them from accessing regulated financial services and forces them to rely on informal lenders with predatory fees.

Without a proper ID, people can’t apply for loans. A Barangay certificate, for instance, isn’t machine-readable or verifiable against any government database. This is the biggest step the Philippines needs to take.

I’ve heard good news that progress is being made, but when will it reach everyone? What’s unique about the Philippines is that we have 25 different types of IDs—no other market faces this challenge. It’s a peculiar situation that I hope will change soon so we can implement proper KYC for everyone.

Paulo: Now that you mention it, it sounds like such an obvious answer—almost a no-brainer.

Mila: Exactly. I keep saying it, hoping the BSP will enforce a fast and effective solution.

Why Mila joined Greg, for the third time

Paulo: I also want to talk about your working relationship with Greg. You mentioned earlier that you worked with him at Platinum Bank. How has that relationship from back in Ukraine impacted the way you work with him today at Tonik?

Mila: This is my third company with Greg. It’s because I believe in him—he’s someone who always comes to win. He would never start a project unless he was 100% sure of its potential, and he always puts in 200% effort to make sure it succeeds.

He already has a success story from Platinum, and for me, I’m confident that Tonik will be another success because Greg is leading it. When you’re doing a startup, you usually think twice about it. But for me, joining a startup with Greg involved was a no-brainer. I know he’ll never fail or back down. Whatever happens, he’ll make sure we succeed.

Paulo: What do you think drives that almost stubborn determination and optimism in Greg?

Mila: He’s incredibly productive, super smart, and genuinely cares about the team. And I don’t just mean in a surface-level way—he really makes sure everyone is aligned and on the same page.

He invests a lot of effort into communicating with everyone in the company, even the janitors, so they understand why we’re doing what we do, what we need to achieve next, and how we’ll get there. Keeping the team aligned like that takes a lot of work, and it’s something very different from other companies I’ve worked for.