I was recently involved in a “mental drill” with a friend regarding the evolution of technology in the Nigerian Financial market over the last two decades. Our discussion started from the context of reviewing the passage of a bill to strip the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) the autonomy to control the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) which has hitherto been a unit in the EFCC. In actual fact, the said bill went further to establish the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency. My friend and I had our points and opinions for or against the intention of the National Assembly regarding the passage of this bill. As many Nigerians might have imagined, the bill may not have been unconnected to the “beefing” relationship (or what else can one call it) between the Executive and the Legislature as a result of the failure of the Legislature to approve Mr. Ibrahim Magu as the substantive Chairman of the EFCC. The Legislature had claimed that the reason for the creation of NFIU and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency was to make these agencies autonomous and to follow the footsteps of the Egmont group. Egmont group is the global body that allows financial intelligence sharing amongst nations.

Whether rightly or wrongly intended, the establishment of the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Agency as separate autonomous bodies should be welcomed by all. Without trying to play side, I will advise that the executive immediately begins the process of signing this bill into law because of the inherent benefits to Nigerian consumer market.

This article is the first of four publications that attempt to review Financial Digital Intelligence (FDI) in Nigeria. FDI is also an acronym for FinTech (Financial Technology). Starting with this publication, I shall be explaining the evolution of Artificial Intelligent technologies in the Nigerian Financial sector and highlighting how far the stakeholders have fared in the efforts to creating financial transparency and fighting financial crimes and corrupt practices with the aid of technology innovations.

Many consumers of financial services usually go through mental efforts to succeed in managing their cash flows, trail spending habits and plan for savings, whether short or long term. Imagine you are equipped with an intelligent app that helps you compare the prices of your favourite toiletries amongst the major supermarkets around you and pitches the best buy based on rewards, distance to your location and service quality. I think one will appreciate an app of this nature that enables one to buy smartly and in the long-run allows you to save some few Naira. This is SmartSpend, an AssistCIO FinTech for retailers and consumers. There are also other chat enabled FinTech apps, known as Chatbots that allow you carry out financial transactions with your banks by leveraging on the chat features of Facebook messenger and other popular chat tools. An example is Kudi, a Nigerian financial chatbot.

These two are just very few use cases of how technology innovations especially around Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are helping industries and economies add financial values. I shall be highlighting more FinTech use cases in the subsequent publications. For now, let us focus deeply on the meaning of Financial Digital Intelligence as it concerns economic transparency and pursuance of corrupt-free financial system.

The impact of financial instability resulting from non-availability or non-applicability of Fintech on any nation’s economy can be very costly. Nigeria is currently trying to come out of recession which many has attributed to reckless government spending and lack of courage to fight financial fraud and corrupt practices by previous governments. Consequently, the need for clear policy direction cannot be overemphasized. We need a state of emergency in the fight against financial crime. I guess this is one of the reasons why those that support the National Assembly on the passage of the NFIU bill will applaud the legislature and see this as a bold step.

Expectations are that with the establishment of NFIU and Nigerian Financial Agency, experts and technocrats in the field of Artificial Intelligence, Machine and Deep Learning areas of software engineering and administration of statistical analysis will be lured by government to develop cutting edge solutions.

The days of enterprise programming for financial processes are numbered. The advancement in Big Data Analytic technology and Artificial Intelligence has brought about arrays of solutions and tools that financial organisations can leverage to provide effective quality services and products to their consumers. I guess Nigerians have seen it all regarding the Internet Banking and ATM services that our banks have come to offer in the last 15 years. There seem to be no new “thing” as every bank is not quite different from another regarding digital financial service offerings.

How can the financial sector make financial services attractive to the Nigerian youth who currently constitute about 50.13% of our population? Unfortunately about 47% of this youthful population are either unemployed or underemployed, according to the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics. This is a population that is termed impetus and very exploring of technology. One is amazed by the amount of internet traffic daily generated by this population alone with their usage of social media and mobile data. I am sure you are already having some innovative ideas on how to deploy this population intelligently. Imagine you are into financial services and just about 25% of the unemployed population works for you just with the use of their mobile phones! Imagine the ripple effects of this on our economy. Anyway, I will leave you to think about how for now as I will surely provide more insights on this in later publications.

Financial digital transformation does not end with the use of ATM, internet banking and SMS to transact businesses, those are kind of ancient for the future generations of consumers. It’s also not just about punching some keys to get your customer’s loan profile by just leveraging on his or her savings and balances with your bank. It goes beyond that. I think a bank will be more intelligent if for instance, it can for example leverage on the spending habits, the ages and number of children in schools, demographic data and social behaviour of its customers to determine their loan profiles by leveraging on the powers of deep and machine learning. This is what I call Financial Digital Intelligence.

In the next publication, I will be discussing more on the impact of Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning on Financial system stability.

Think deep and stay intelligent

Rahmon Akanbi
Managing Director and CEO
AssistCIO Limited