By Pascal Oparada
Banks in Nigeria are not competing with technology companies in the country, rather they are partnering with them to create a platform for them to leverage on and draw more customers, says Uzoma Dozie, Managing Director of Diamond Bank.
Dozie was fielding questions from journalists at the ongoing TechFest 2018 which has been termed the biggest tech gathering in Nigeria. TechFest seeks to showcase the technological creativity of Nigerians and connect techies to investors and provide funding for budding techpreneurs.
He said rather than see banks as competitors, techies should see them as partners because they (the banks) spend huge resources telling prospective customers to trust FinTech.
“The whole idea is using big data to drive decisions. Data can be used to drive Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) for different states in Nigeria. Most organisations would not be able to take the right type of decisions without the right type of data.
“I believe that there is a mobile phone, there is a technology solution. Along with USSD, you can collect that information. You can use that information to make decisions and to do things, either to lend or to determine whether somebody is loyal or not,” Dozie stated.
He said that a lot of customers are not comfortable with technology and said that financial institutions should do more to educate people about FinTech.
“Part of developing a new product is that you must be able to educate people to change from one way to another, even people who are learned. The illiterate of the future is not one that cannot write, but one that cannot unlearn what they have learned and relearn.
Advising organisations to leverage big data to drive decisions, Dozie said that that is what has endeared customers to Diamond Bank – the deployment of technology.
“Technology has brought us new customers. It has helped us to be able to serve customers. To give them that customer experience in a cost-effective manner by leveraging technology.
“A new way of banking is going to be completely different. It is going to be done by Artificial Intelligence, by Machine Learning and so you must be ready to unlearn what you have learned and to learn a new way of serving your customers”, he said.
The idea of partnering with techies at TechFest is to be able to drive growth and deepen customers experience, he told TheNiche at the event.
“The strategy is that if we just provide banking services, people would engage with us with a small percentage of their time. But if we bring in more partners together to provide better services customers would spend more time with us.
“That is what TechFest is about. It is not about Diamond Bank. It about all of us coming together to create a platform to give people a richer experience than all of us doing it individually.
TechFest 2018 attracted over 3,000 participants. They expressed disappointment over lack of enough tech hubs to engage them. They advised organizers to bring in more tech hubs in subsequent editions.
The event saw techpreneurs pitching their products to draw investors and funding for their start-ups.
TechFest closes Wednesday, 16, 2018.
