11 minute read
summit round-up
ARTICLE by StEVE MBEgO & KEVIN Namunwa
The Africa Fintech Summit Round-Up
Advertisement
The 6th Africa Fintech Summit, 22 and 23 June 2022, was a gathering of some of the finest minds in the fintech space in Africa. It was two days of networking, knowledge and idea sharing and good food at Radisson Blu, Upper Hill with a detailed, high-level agenda.
the africa fintech summit 2022
Africa Fintech Summit Lives Up To Its Expectation
One of Africa’s biggest financial technology events, the Africa Fintech Summit 2022, lived to its expectation. It was home to brilliant ideas not just from the speakers, panelists and moderators, it also blew trends wide open. The hybrid event, which happened at The Radisson Blu Hotel, Upper Hill, Nairobi, gathered top fintech experts and business decision-makers from around the world to explore the new and emerging technologies, trends and new business models that will drive the future of fintech across all industries. The event gave the attendees the much event opportunity to network over lunch and coffee breaks.
The keynote speaker at the event, Jerome Ochieng, PS, Ministry of ICT & Innovation, described the rise of Fintech in Africa as revolutionary and asked the continent’s banks not to be left behind of the changes. ”Banks should focus on customer experience and customer data and analytics to ensure they’re not left behind in the new Fintech world. Banks need to focus on improving the customer experience through digital channels, mobile apps and bots. Banks must also invest in building up their customer data assets so that they can better understand where customers’ habits,” he said.
He also lauded the President Uhuru Kenyatta for not signing the controversial ICT Practitioners Bill 2020.
dX⁵ (formerly CIO Africa) CEO, Kelly Bentley, lauded the event saying it unites the African fintech experts spread across the globe to discuss key issues shaping the sector. She also thanked sponsors and attendees. Fintech is a $500 billion industry that is growing rapidly: analysts predict it will reach $10 trillion by 2025, with mobile money underwriting much of this expansion. The rise of Fintech has been global in scope: fintech investments have doubled since 2013, with new regional markets emerging as powerhouses for innovation like Kenya and Nigeria. The Africa Fintech Summit 2022 was sponsored by leading technology companies including VMware, Incentro Africa, Dimension Data, MetaMap, Finserve, Computer Learning Center, Paix, Trans Business Machines (TBM) and Cellulant. Partners for the event are Little Cab and Craft Silicon.
A panel discussion at the summit
A panel discussion at the summit
the africa fintech summit 2022
anre Bamisebi, the Group Director IT & Operations Director Equity Group Holdings Plc
In the financial technology space, banks and fintech continue to embrace the idea of open banking. This was one of the key topics of discussion at the Africa Fintech Summit, how open banking can be used to drive the future of banking. Open banking is a technology-enabled approach to financial services that utilises aggregated and authenticated data, connected APIs, to give consumers more ways to consume their financial data while also making transactions more secure. In his presentation about open banking, Lanre Bamisebi, the Group Director IT & Operations Director Equity Group Holdings Plc, said that in open banking it’s important to note that the data belongs to the customer and not the bank.
Lanre further said that there has been a paradigm shift with open banking that has basically changed the ownership right for customers’ data. Open banking and sharing of APIs has made the banks realize that the data belongs to the customer. Data privacy laws have also made the customers aware that they are the owners of the data. ”For a long time, banks have assumed that they own the data but now there has been a paradigm shift and customers are now the owners of the data. The customer can tell us how he/she wants to use the data,” he said. embraced the sharing of banks’ APIs but it’s not good for the banks which didn’t know that the data didn’t belong to them in the first place. For instance, when a bank’s executive team sits down to develop solutions for their customers, they assume they know what the customer wants.
With the sharing of APIs, the customer’s behaviour and interactions tell the bank what kind of services they need to make available to the customer and give the customer a choice of what they would prefer. ”Bankers have discovered that we need to be able to use data to determine how to best serve the customer. For instance, you can determine credit scores based on the behaviors of the customer and how they have treated previous loans. Determining whether the customer will be able to repay the loan or not,” Lanre noted.
Banks maintain vast archives of customer data, and the revolution in Big Data over the last decade has allowed some banks to realise the benefits of that data internally. For the mid-market, we see a persistent gap in these banks’ abilities to leverage their own data. Without closing this gap, these banks will remain in a defensive market position as the pace to open banking quickens. Open banking has the potential to increase existing revenue streams and add new ones while expanding customer reach for financial institutions. It can also create revenue-sharing ecosystems, where incumbents give customers access to third party-developed services while profiting from a subscription or referral basis. Open banking relies on a bank’s ability to leverage its data, highlighting an urgent first step in any banks’ journey.
How Cellulant Has Managed To Thrive After Ken Njoroge’s Exit
Harry Hare, dx5 Chief Content Director & Chairman and Faith Nkatha Country Manager, Cellulant
Founded 18 years ago by Ken Njoroge and Bolaji Akinboro, Cellulant has grown to become probably the most successful fintech in Africa. The fintech has also managed to pull off what most startups in Africa have struggled with; they have outlived the founders.
Faith Nkatha, Country Manager, Cellulant talked about what gives Cellulant the difference in the market in a fireside chat with Harry Hare, Chief Content Director & Chairman. During the chat, she pointed out that the main difference is that Cellulant focuses on the customer, and it is a culture that has been instilled into the staff. ”We always say that ‘when you follow the customer, you follow the money’,” she said, ”over the years, we have been innovating because we want to be at the heart of what the customer is feeling and wants. We always want to be ahead of that.” She further added that the Njoroge instilled a culture that has been existent within the organization such that anyone who comes in understands what the company’s vision is. Ken Njoroge, the founder, instilled a culture that is still existent at the company even after he left. ”When I came in, and Ken was talking to me, the vision he was talking about was not his, it was Cellulant’s. The DNA is not Ken’s. It’s Cellulant’s DNA and it’s fed into every fibre of the organisation.” ”The organisation has had to live past him. The organisation still has life because the people in it understand the DNA and understand what we stand for, which is ‘follow the customer, follow the money’,” she added. Cellulant is now present in 35 countries from across the continent and are still projecting to grow further. With expansion, there also come an issue of dealing with different regulation from all these different countries.
Faith also spoke about regulation and how Cellulant have been able to align their model with the different regulations. She said that the brand in regulation is the same and regulators behave in a certain way. ”The foundation of the business is very important, because it has the company built in a specific way that will be aligned with regulation. It is also important to have a good relationship with the regulator so that you learn about the trends in the space,” she noted.
”It is also important to invest in protecting the company. Have people in your team who are managing compliance and regulation, this is infrastructure and structure that gives you an easier job aligning with the regulator,” Nkatha added. Investors have also played a key role in the growth of the fintech organization and Faith recognizes that the fact that Cellulant has had ground investors is key to its growth. These investors are aware of the environment and provide support to help the company grow in the environment as it is at any given moment.
”We have also made clear the vision we have and when an investor comes in, they know what we are working towards and know how they can plug into the vision. They also know what to expect from their investment as well,” she explained.
As we go through the aftermath of the disruption that was caused by COVID-19, we realise that a lot of things have changed. That is digital transformation, fast tracked digital transformation.
Digital transformation has accelerated our movement away from cash towards digital payments, and the payments modernisation trend shows no signs of slowing down. Companies are racing to move towards modernizing their payments. At the Africa Fintech Summit, VMware’s Lorna Hardie, the Regional Director for Sub Saharan Africa advised companies on what they need to consider for a payment modernization strategy. According to Lorna, modernising payment is all around modernising your app which is the way you engage with the user.
”In everything, we always want to prioritise the customer. We want the customer to have a seamless experience. In modernising payments, the focus needs to be the customer and how convenient it will be for the end user,” she said.
Banks need to deliver a digital, customer first experience that will, in the end, get the trust of the customer. This means providing an array of services to the customers. Lorna suggested that these companies need to provide a one-of-a-kind experience. In giving this experience, a lot of things are key. Developments such as digital payments, mobile banking, contactless transactions, e-signing, and digital lending all make the experience more convenient for the end user.
Hardie went ahead to give a case example of VMware and how they assist
the africa fintech summit 2022
Lornie Hardie, The Regional Director for Sub Saharan Africa at VMware companies strategize their movement to a modernized payment system. She said that typically talk to their client about several steps towards digital-first banking. The first step will be to become future ready, fully resilient, and to support a multi-cloud strategy. A company will need to leverage the public and hybrid cloud to meet new business needs and demands. It is important because it enables you to run your environment in the cloud, with the same consistent management, security, and automation approach.
Why Banks Should Embrace APIs
Banks should embrace Application Programming Interface (API) technology to meet the demands of the modern customers who now value premium digital experiences. An API is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. In essence, it is the messenger that delivers your request to the provider that you’re requesting it from and then delivers the response back to you. According to Imran Sumra, Co-Founder and CEO FinSense, banks that still rely on legacy systems often face great challenges in meeting the needs of the modern customers.
”The problems banks are facing today is relying on legacy systems which are not agile enough to meet the ever-changing needs of the modern customers. Banks that still maintain legacy systems, have challenges with recent technology skill sets and a huge background of innovation requests which they cannot meet. This places them at a competition disadvantage with emerging fintechs,” said Sumra.
By adopting APIs, Sumra stated that banks could make their processes much easier and efficient. ”Banks today are struggling with efficiency. Some of their processes still do not adapt to customer needs. When you have a well implemented API ecosystems, you will create efficiency across the organization’s processes such as data and security,” he said. Moreover, having an effective API architecture in system will enable banks to collect data which they can use to improve their processes. APIs are used to extract data between two systems that are communicating. ”With APIs in place, you will be able to keenly monitor what data is coming in and going out of the organization. With this information, organisations can make better use of the data. Any process that is not reliable or is time consuming can be greatly improved by an API,” he said.
