‘Poverty eradication, wealth distribution germane to financial inclusion target’

Executive Director, Systemspecs, Deremi Atanda

The Executive Director, Systemspecs, Deremi Atanda has said that poverty eradication and even wealth distribution should be the focus of the country if it must achieve the 80 per cent financial inclusion target by 2020.

He stressed that increased unemployment in the country has excluded many people from the financial target.

In his words: “Financial inclusion is beyond savings and making payment. It includes insurance, lending and more.

What goal do we set for 2020? Almost 80 per cent of us are at the lowest part of the pyramid only. We can’t have one-face approach to solve the problem.

Many people with financial flow don’t know how to maximize it for the purpose.”

Speaking at the 2018 Artificial Intelligence for Financial Inclusion Summit themed “New Algorithm for the Financially Excluded Segment,” organised by Data Science Nigeria (DSN) in Lagos, Atanda called for more collaboration in both financial and technology sectors towards bridging the gap in the country.

Adding that there was no sufficient data to plan with, Atanda said Artificial Intelligence (AI) and stakeholders’ collaboration in the data space can help address the challenge adequately.

“AI is just describing a certain dimension of technology that extends human capacity.

The human capacity to look through tons of data is limited so you train machines to be able to gain the type of insight human being can gain at a very fast rate and be able to suggest multi alternative just about the same time.

“We look at saving and lending in a market where savings is so low or there are regulations holding that back.

AI can give us insight to the kind of data of people who are eligible for credit and are not even aware and in that way you are addressing one of the issues that need be addressed.

“Some of us that think we are financially included do not have access to credit. Many have bank accounts but no saving plans.

AI can address all that in a collaborative way. We can challenge the issues and extreme poverty,” he added.

On the DSN bootcamp, Atanda said it will about using technology to gain insight and to design interventions for the financially excluded.

“It is about identifying the people who are financially excluded and defining intervention for the different demographics.

As a major technology player in that financial transaction space, there are some set of people who we bring to the market that can help.

“It is clear we are falling behind the target. All stakeholders need to collaborate and need to do more of talking than doing.

It is time to say what tool we can leverage on to reach the goal and AI is one of the ways,” he added.