- By Bayo Akeem
Few professionals have left as significant a mark on Nigeria’s data science landscape as Olumuyiwa Idowu Orukotan. Olumuyiwa led a transformative agenda that modernized the bank’s credit, compliance, and fraud prevention systems using cutting-edge AI.
His approach to risk modeling combined local context with enterprise-scale tools. Under his leadership, Access Bank adopted a unified AI roadmap across its retail and compliance divisions, enabling scalable, explainable machine learning systems aligned with both business objectives and regulatory expectations.
One of his most impactful projects was the development of an alternative credit scoring engine that leveraged telco metadata, mobile transaction behavior, and location data. This innovation unlocked access to credit for thousands of customers previously excluded from the formal lending system. Within 12 months of deployment, default rates dropped by 21%, and lending operations expanded significantly in regions that had traditionally been underserved by commercial banks.
His fraud analytics pipeline was equally transformative. Olumuyiwa oversaw the deployment of machine learning algorithms to detect suspicious patterns across mobile banking and USSD channels. The results were immediate: flagging accuracy improved by 37%, customer complaints decreased, and overall fraud losses were curtailed at a time when digital banking adoption was soaring.
Beyond technical execution, his work introduced lasting structural change. Olumuyiwa championed the creation of a centralized data lake and intelligence layer that brought together fragmented datasets across business units. The Azure-powered ecosystem integrated seamlessly with Power BI and Databricks, drastically reducing the time needed to generate insights for senior leadership. Strategic dashboards that once took days to assemble were now live and refreshed in real-time, enhancing decision-making at every level of the organization.
This impact extended across Nigeria’s financial ecosystem. His work helped inform strategic collaborations between Access Bank and regional fintech partners working on digital credit and savings platforms. By building models that could adapt to informal market behaviors, his team created the tools that smaller players could also adopt.
While many data science teams focus narrowly on enterprise gains, Olumuyiwa’s vision was broader. He understood that algorithmic innovation must ripple beyond organizational boundaries to truly reshape the financial landscape. From the early stages of product design to the deployment of compliance engines and credit automation, his influence became embedded in the bank’s digital DNA.
As Nigerian banking institutions continue their journey toward smart, inclusive finance, the framework laid by Olumuyiwa Orukotan remains a national reference point. His career stands as a model for how technical leadership, when grounded in local realities and scaled with discipline, can drive outcomes that matter far beyond the walls of a single institution.