Ndubuisi Ekekwe’s Keynote At First Bank Fintech Summit 5.0 [Video]

One of the finest moments in Nigeria’s entrepreneurial ecosystem happened in the decade of 1990s when new species of banks were created. What happened then was “intra-bank” integration where the banks essentially linked their branches into a mammoth network, making it possible that once you open an account in one branch of a bank in Nigeria, you can bank from all the bank’s branches.

As we moved from voice telephony to the mobile internet age, we upgraded that “intra-bank” to “inter-bank”, through NIBBS, offering a unified quasi-banking ordinance. With Open Banking, this evolution goes beyond banks to now include insurance, mortgage, etc to drive the new age of application utility era which I expect to be massive. 

From the 7th century Tang dynasty of the invention of paper money to the Great Debate of Pythagoras and to the modern concept of co-opetition, one thing has been constant: industries advance when they find ways to cooperate even as they compete against one another. 

Open Banking is a vista to advance the financial services sector, and accelerate innovation and improve service delivery for citizens, unbounded and unconstrained by disparate ecosystems. Financial APIs will change economies, but they can only be super-potent if powered within a unified regime which open banking offers. Across all domains, “open” offers abundance, and open banking has a promise to redesign industrial architectures and unleash a new dawn for the wealth in nations.