Dr. Segun Aina is Chairman, Fintech Associates Ltd as well as President of Fintech Association of Nigeria, an organisation that aims at making banking industry in Nigeria and Africa more accessible to the grassroots through technology. He spoke with Sina Fadare.
Attraction to technology
I started my life as a banker with no knowledge of technology, along the line I discovered that technology will enhance banking more efficiently. When I moved from UBA to Eco Bank, I was employed as head of operations and technology. I didn’t have a choice but to develop interest in technology. I did self-tutoring and luckily Ecobank gave me the needed support.
Assuming the position of General Manager, Technology at Ecobank was very easy for me to use technology to provide banking services to more people that needed the services. That was how my interest germinated. When I moved to Fountain Trust Bank, I faced a little challenge converting it to commercial bank, though it was not new, but it was not easy for a commercial bank to compete with the likes of UBA.
To achieve success, we needed to use technology. After looking at 20 different ideas, we picked result checking, and today if you do examination like WAEC, JAMB, NECO, you can check your result on your phone. I started it in 2001 and as at that time, we were able to get all the examination bodies and since there was nothing like that in the market place, we were able to get all the business of those institutions.
I partnered an America to set up a technology company, and within two years we had about thirty programmers. They developed programmes for schools. We created the Fintech Association of Nigeria from nowhere and today almost all the banks are members. We have a technology company within the conglomerate called Deloitte, and about seven universities including University of Ibadan, UNN, Babcock and FUTA are members. The universities serve as research grounds for us.
Flip side of technology
Yes, but l always tell people that my answer to that is that technology will create more jobs. Let me cite an example of a study done by The World Economic Forum, they did a study in 2018, and they came out with the fact that by 2021-2022, there will be millions of job roles that does not exist today.
Today banking is not about banking because there are people that are now lending money and they are not bankers and with your mobile phone they can determine how much you can afford. So if you apply for a loan, in 30 seconds they will approve it for you.
How do manage fraud
Today, why there is less armed robbery or burglary is because nobody keeps much money at home anymore. Though, there will always be challenge, that is where regulations and continuous improvement in technology is very important.
Expectation from Fintech Association of Nigeria
We are now moving from Fintech to banking education. Global Banking Education Board is a board that brings together all the professional banking institutions in the world. This will enable us determine the level, the quality and the standardized qualification of bankers all over the world. Ecobank for example, is in 36 countries of the world, First Bank is also in UK and the likes, we don’t want to get to UK and be subjected to some tests of standards of ethics and so on, so we are going to have a standard of training for bankers.
Leave a Reply