‘Banks Must Embrace Open Banking for Efficient On-boarding, Operations’ – KPMG

KPMG‘s Partner and Lead for Digital Transformation in Africa, Boye Ademola has enjoined the banking sector stakeholders to embrace open banking operations as digital transformation for efficiency and onboarding financial model operations.

Ademola made the submission while speaking as one of the speakers at Business Day Open Sesame tagged “Unlocking the Future of Financial Innovation through Domestic Third Providers”

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He explained at the virtual meeting that the potentials in open banking to the financial services industry in the Nigeria economy are enomous.

He further explained open banking as a financial technology that refers to the use of open APIs that enable third-party developers to build applications and services around the financial institution.

According to him, open banking is a strategic discussion for Nigeria, saying the country has a huge population of under-bank of fifty million people adults.

“Agency banking will reduce the burden of money transaction at ATMs, current banking model and cost structure is too expensive, so we need to be more innovative to bring the cost down and bring the under-bank into the fold.

On Nigeria banking sector, Ademola said banks are increasingly taking leadership posture on the continent and this is important for the digital transformation initiative and banks are expanding geography, so they need digital transformation.

Speaking further on Nigeria emerging as the nerve centre for digital and Fintech, he highlighted that the three biggest technology investment in Africa are all in Nigeria and they must continue to accelerate in capital investment and have a clear national direction on open banking which would extend our products and services and made us a model on Africa continent.

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“The banks have made significant progress, but we are where we are, we actually need new frontiers and we have created lots of innovation in the space even though isn’t acknowledged. Banks are embracing innovations, setting up digital labs, we need some concrete actions from different stakeholders, more from the banks by leveraging on products or services that can be consumed for the third party, he said.