Security Bank reached a pivotal moment when its leadership recognized the company’s need to modernize its infrastructure to support stronger API security, centralized governance, and scalable delivery. At the time, the bank was relying on an outdated Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) system, which masqueraded as an API gateway, ultimately requiring too many tools to manage effectively.

“We weren’t using a real gateway at that time, and we were stuck without a centralized control point to enforce policy or streamline workflows,” said Aloysius Mendoza, Head of Platform Engineering.

These technical challenges began bleeding into Security Bank’s strategic goals for expansion. With over 50 local banks competing in the Philippine market, the team knew that they had to deliver faster, more reliable digital services using secure APIs to remain competitive. Their existing tools had proven too heavyweight, complex, and costly to maintain, and they were slowing them down.

Preparing to launch their first customer-facing APIs, Security Bank needed a solution that would allow them to segment workloads, improve governance, and scale efficiently, without overwhelming complexity or cost.

After a thorough evaluation process, which included expert insights and research, Security Bank chose Kong for its API management platform. The team was searching for a fit-for-purpose solution that was lightweight, cloud-ready, and immediately scalable.

“Kong checked every box for us,” Mendoza said. " It provided a lightweight, efficient solution—delivering the agility and ultimate control essential for our rapid development and deployment needs."

Kong’s modular architecture and strong centralized governance capabilities made it stand out from the crowd. Using Kong Konnect, Security Bank implemented a centralized control plane that simplified API operations and fully replaced a fragmented system that had been previously managed by ten different teams.

Developer experience was a key priority for Security Bank, and the integration of Kong Insomnia — Kong’s collaborative API development platform — streamlined developer workflows and standardized the API lifecycle from testing to deployment. Plus, Kong's enterprise-grade plugins allowed them to improve security and observability from day one.

“Now we’ve got one control plane, one governance model, and one developer toolkit—it’s streamlined everything,” Mestas said.

Within the first year of using Kong, Security Bank saw a 25% reduction in API-related incidents — a direct result of moving to a centralized enforcement model. This allowed the team to shift focus from troubleshooting to innovating on new customer-facing features and services.

By simplifying development processes and integrating Kong into their CI/CD workflows, the bank has also achieved faster development and iteration cycles. They have made significant progress toward their goals of improving TTM by 25% each year.

Security Bank aimed to achieve 99.99% availability, a critical metric in the banking sector, and Kong has transformed the way the bank develops and governs its APIs. 

Using Insomnia, developers now work within a unified framework that covers testing, implementation, and deployment. This milestone reduced the burden on developer teams for a noticeable improvement in service reliability, coinciding with the bank’s broader strategy to shift more workloads to the cloud. In their second year, as more services moved to the cloud, the team saw measurable improvements in system uptime.  “As we move to the cloud, Kong has made it easier to maintain performance while scaling our services,” Mendoza said.

As Security Bank continues to improve its API strategy, its teams see Kong as a foundational partner. They are exploring more advanced use cases, including threat detection, event-driven architecture, and plug-and-play service models, to power modular banking experiences. 

“Ultimately, we want to be known for delivering secure, seamless, and customer-centric banking experiences,” Mestas said. “Kong is helping us get there faster with the right balance of control and innovation.”