...To
drive financial inclusion
It was Sir
Isaac Newton, in his letter to Robert Hooke in 1675, who wrote the now-famous
quote: “If I have seen further (than others), it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants.”
The
shoulders of giants Sir Newton referred to has to do with leverage provided by
the discoveries and experiences of people who have gone before or walked that
same path earlier, that pave the way for and enable other people and a new
generation to take things to a totally new dimension.
The truth
is, giants whose shoulders provide such leverage to the next generation can be
found in various fields and various nations. In Nigeria, for example, such
giants exist in various fields and they are known and recognised.
Take the
fintech (financial technology) space in Nigeria, where one bank is known to
have stood as a giant with very broad shoulders, having capacities that have
been built up and accumulated over 127 continuous years. Every year since 2016
(apart from 2017 when it was implementing ideas from 2016, including a Digital
Innovation Lab), this well-recognised bank has provided a platform for the most
robust engagement of the fintech industry in Nigeria. Tagged Fintech Summit,
the annual engagement has continued to help in catalysing the fintech sector to
ever-higher levels from year to year.
Held in
Lagos the commercial capital of Nigeria and arguably the fintech capital of
Africa, given Nigeria’s status as the leading nation in the fintech space in
Africa, the annual FirstBank Fintech Summit has attracted an average of a
thousand participants, who are mostly fintech owners, workers and enthusiasts,
yearly. Last year’s Summit, Fintech Summit 4.0 with the theme
“How Blockchain
and Artificial Intelligence will Disrupt Fintech in Nigeria”, however, drew an
unprecedented number of participants – over 6,000 from across 52 different
countries. It was the first virtual Summit due to the restrictions imposed
because of the COVID-19 pandemic and it featured as keynote speaker Silicon
Valley-based innovator of international repute, Chinedu Echeruo, who founded
HopStop that was later sold to Apple for US$1 billion. Imagine the inspiration,
dreams and aspirations young people soak up while listening to speakers with
such a profile.
Far from
being one-directional – with all the talk flowing from only the speaker to the
audience – the yearly Summit is actually a platform for multidimensional
engagement involving various stakeholders in the fintech industry – operators,
regulators, investors, enthusiasts, fintech journalists and writers, bankers,
et cetera.
It offers
an unequalled opportunity for networking among fintech and other stakeholders,
leading to opportunities for collaboration within the community. For small
businesses and start-ups powered by FirstBank’s support, the annual Summit has
been a veritable platform for showcasing them. The platform has also served for
the announcement of policy initiatives coupled with pronouncements that provide
clarifications to policy. This is due to invitations extended to regulators and
the important role they are assigned in conversations facilitated during the
Summit.
The Summit
that preceded last year’s, i.e., the third edition of Fintech Summit 3.0 held
in 2019, featured another heavyweight in Nigeria’s fintech industry, Victor
Asemota, founder of Swifta Systems & Services, as keynote speaker. The
theme “Banking + Tech = Solving Real Problems”, included panel sessions
featuring experts with over two hundred combined years of experience in both
the financial and technological industries.
They
applied their knowledge, expertise and experience to address challenges in the
technologically-driven business world, structured in terms of Solving Business
Problems; Solving Regulatory, Security and Legal Problems; and Solving
Lifestyle Problems. At the end of the Summit, participants must have felt that
the Summit delivered on the confidence the Chief Executive Officer of
FirstBank, Adesola Adeduntan, had expressed when he remarked in his welcome
address, “I am optimistic that every organisation represented here will be
empowered to provide services with greater speed and solve real societal
problems to the advantage of the Nigerian populace through the insights that
will be gained from this event.“
Fintech
Summit 3.0 had built on the success of the second edition, Fintech Summit 2.0
held in 2018, which had “The Future of Banking – The Role of Artificial
Intelligence (AI) and Big Data” as a theme. Adia Sowho, the Managing Director
of Mines in Nigeria, had, as the first keynote speaker, stressed the importance
of collaboration between legacy banks and fintechs in the overall good of their
shared financial services space. The Deputy Managing Director of FirstBank,
Gbenga Shobo, had, in his welcome address, said that FirstBank was committed to
finding the right balance in its approach in supporting the budding fintech
industry. It is gratifying that the bank has since found that right balance and
pushed ahead enthusiastically with the continual annual engagement that is its
yearly Fintech Summit.
For those
who like to bring up the argument that deposit money banks (DMBs) and fintech
are rivals competing in the same space for the same customers and wonder why FirstBank,
a leading deposit money bank, would itself be involved in efforts to catalyse
the fintech industry, they need to wake up and smell the coffee. FirstBank is
continuously evolving and staying on the cutting edge of technology in order to
better serve its customers, who are themselves evolving and adapting to newer
and more efficient and convenient technologies as they become available.
And FirstBank is
on a journey to a future where it is happy, in the spirit of the African
tradition of Ubuntu, to take all fintech along with it. In the words of another
famous quote, “The sky is too big for two [or many] big birds flying in it to
collide.” FirstBank believes there is ample room for all players – deposit
money banks, fintech, et cetera – to fulfil their unique roles. Therefore,
collaboration, not competition, is FirstBank’s watchword. And FirstBank
considers fintech partners in progress in its avowed commitment to driving
financial inclusion.
FirstBank’s
own evolution and the transition is causing some people to question its
continuous classification by the Central Bank as a deposit money bank (with a
preponderance of bricks-and-mortar banking operations) rather than a digital
bank. And the reasons for their argument cannot be easily waved aside. In 2020,
for example, over 85 per cent of the banking transactions that were required by
customers of FirstBank were performed on the bank’s self-service channels.
That means
customers of the bank only needed the attention of the bank’s staff or branches
for just 15 per cent of all the banking transactions they required in 2020.
There are now as many as over 16 million customers between FirstBank’s digital
channels of online banking (called FirstOnline), mobile banking (christened
FirstMobile) and USSD banking (called *894# quick banking).
Between
FirstOnline and FirstMobile, a growth of 21 per cent in the user base was
experienced in 2020. Customers on both platforms conducted approximately 256
million transactions worth N15.7 trillion in the same year. FirstOnline, as of
June 2021, had an impressive 597,466 customers on the service, a 17 per cent
growth on the previous year and 578,292 transactions per month, averaging a
value of N388 billion per month.
For
FirstMobile, besides the impressive gain in numbers, it gained recognition as
“Best Mobile Banking App” at the Global Finance Best Digital Bank Awards, for
providing excellent self-service through its user-friendly app. FirstMobile
had, as of June 2021, 4,596,203 users on the platform, which is a nine per cent
growth on the previous year and an average of 27,730,830 transactions every
month. While these numbers point to the giant statue of the bank, none of it
excites FirstBank as much as Firstmonie, because of its invaluable role in
driving financial inclusion at the grassroots level, one of FirstBank’s
overriding commitments.
Firstmonie,
the agent banking network of FirstBank, currently has over 130,000 agents
across the country, making it the largest bank-led agent network anywhere in
Africa. As the foremost financial inclusion service in the country, it has
achieved over 750 million transactions worth N15 trillion (about US$30 billion)
processed from inception to date.
Over 295
million of those transactions with a total value of N6.65 trillion were processed
in 2020 alone – the same year COVID-19 caused widespread disruptions across the
globe. Firstmonie agency banking scheme has empowered agents across all Local
Government Areas in the country, providing employment to thousands of people.
FirstBank through
the Firstmonie platform further supports the fintech industry via partnership
collaborations with local and international fintechs. All these are geared
towards expanding financial inclusion and providing a variety of services to
customers of the bank with giant shoulders that customers and fintechs can
stand on to see further.
As for Sir
Isaac Newton, the giant of a scientist whose famous quote began this piece, if
he could read us from the grave, he would feel very proud today to see that
celebrated line from his 1675 letter being aptly used to represent the
relationship that exists between the broad, energetic and dynamic shoulders of
Nigeria’s banking behemoth, FirstBank, and the rapidly emerging beautiful bride
of Nigeria’s economic sectors, the fintech industry. This relationship climaxes
every year in the annual Fintech Summit and the forthcoming Fintech Summit 5.0
promises to take the relationship to a whole new dimension.
Culled from BusinessDay
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