AI-powered Innovation: How Nigeria’s FSI Leaders Are Shaping Future of Finance 

Bennett Oghifo

How can artificial intelligence (AI) transform the financial services industry (FSI) in Africa? This is the question that many innovative companies, from fintech startups to established banks, are asking as they explore the potential of AI to enhance their offerings and drive economic growth.

Long recognised for their globally competitive approach to innovation, African FSI organisations continue to demonstrate a willingness to embrace new technologies in a bid to innovate and evolve their offerings.

Just last year, the GSM Association ranked Sub-Saharan Africa as the world leader in mobile banking. Many of these institutions, however, are under more pressure than ever to improve profitability through innovation and productivity gains.

Future progress will benefit not just the FSI firms, but also their local customers, and contribute to government efforts in expanding financial inclusion, which ultimately bolsters the wider economy. AI is crucial for substantial productivity improvements, and proactive organisations like Access Holdings Plc. are witnessing its transformative effects firsthand.

A local success story, Access Holdings has evolved over the past 30 years from a small Nigerian bank into a world-class African financial institution, offering banking, insurance, pensions, payments, and lending services. Ultimately servicing more than 56 million customers in multiple different countries, the company was grappling with data management, meeting productivity, and lengthy development timelines.

Against the backdrop of recent AI breakthroughs, the company saw an opportunity to transform its operations through the adoption of generative AI.

“Like any leading organisation, Access Holdings aims to adapt quickly to new technology trends, especially those proven to be highly beneficial like generative artificial intelligence (AI),” shares Lanre Bamisebi, Executive Director, IT and Digitalisation at Access Holdings Plc. “This enables us to mainstream sustainable business practices to support our growth.”

A strategic decision was made to select Microsoft 365 Copilot and encourage the entire organisation’s use of AI by integrating the technology with tools that employees are already using on a daily basis.

As is often the case when it comes to the early adoption of new technologies, employees were initially afraid of embracing AI transformation. Internal surveys showed that while some employees were generally wary of change, others feared specifically that their jobs might be at risk. To help its staff fully embrace the benefits of AI, Access Holdings started rolling out the new technology by training its executive directors and general managers to use Copilot. These sessions also served the dual purpose of enabling the company to gather applicable use cases from the participants. “During the sessions, we were amazed that people who didn’t know how to use AI just a couple of hours before could suddenly come up with different ways to incorporate it into their work,” comments Bamisebi.

In just three months, Access Holdings saw the benefits of Copilot for Microsoft 365 across its operations. By empowering the data science team to quickly extract key insights from mountains of data and enabling developers to dramatically shorten the development lifecycle, AI has opened the door to overnight innovation.

Rather than writing every line of code from scratch, for example, developers can get an outline of code from Copilot and make edits. They can also leverage the tool to review their existing code for efficiency, improving stability

Typically, a project of this nature might take two to three months, but with Copilot, it can be completed in approximately 10 days,” estimates Bamisebi

These significant productivity gains have been felt across the entire workforce, particularly when it comes to the preparation of reports and presentations. For example, Bamisebi says: “One of our executives had to present to investors. She used Copilot to quickly analyse the report, highlight its strengths and weaknesses, and rework the presentation with an analyst. What would have taken five or six hours, took just 45 minutes with Copilot.”

If a significant portion of Access Holdings Plc.’s staff were to work remotely, it would be essential to make internal meetings more efficient and productive. Copilot has had a considerable impact on the speed and efficiency of operations, proving invaluable for employees with packed daily agenda. The tool has helped to streamline collaboration by summarising chats, emails, and meetings, and ensuring that no action items fall through the cracks. This in turn has had a positive effect on employee engagement. “With Copilot summarising meeting minutes and highlighting important points, our staff can focus on the conversation rather than note-taking,” Bamisebi comments. “Copilot helps increase the engagement level of our staff during meetings by about 25%.”

As one of the leading financial services providers in Africa, Access Holdings, is not only reaping the benefits of AI adoption for its own business operations but also setting an example for other companies across the continent and beyond. By leveraging the power of Copilot, the company can deliver faster and more effective services to its customers, while enhancing its internal efficiency and collaboration. This in turn drives growth and innovation for the business, as well as the wider African economy. Access Holdings is proof that AI is not a distant future, but a present reality that can transform the way businesses operate and compete in the global market.