Accra, Ghana//-Top MTN executives at day two of the 3i Africa Summit held in Accra have made a strong case for financial inclusion that ensures the availability and equality of opportunities to access financial services to various individuals especially those within the unbanked population.
According to them, it is the surest way of enhancing inclusiveness in economic growth by enabling the unbanked population to easily access the means for investment, savings, insurance, and easy payment of services, among others towards improving household income and reducing income inequality across Africa.
Leading the charge, Shaibu Haruna, CEO of MobileMoney Limited (MML), MTN Ghana subsidiary responsible for mobile financial services, said: “If you think about the very construct of mobile money or the financial services at the core of it is the financial inclusion with the banks, because its floats sit squarely at the banks and not mobile money service providers”.
He added that; “the way the eco construct of the mobile money service providers has been designed is to ensure that there is an interplay between the financial institutions, fintech relationship provider and also the telco”.
And at the centre of all these revolutions, let’s not forget the revolution of connectivity that we have taken for granted today because all this is built on the very foundation of connectivity. Today, such a commodity, we talk about it. But it is important that for us to be able to drive financial inclusion to the last man, you need that level of skill and reach that is required in the market”, Mr Haruna acknowledged.
Touching on the journey of building around their economies, he indicated that they built a very good business from a transactional point of view with customers transacting tonnes of transactions almost per second bases.
Mr Haruna who shared a panel discussion with Valentine Obi, Founder and CEO of e-Transact Group; Corine Mbiaketcha Nana, Member of PAPSS Management Board, Afreximbank; and Romeo Bugyei, CEO of IT Consortium Ghana, noted that; “we are moving into a space where we are building credit economies and bringing credits are a very core of our customers’ journey”.
This is a skill that they have learnt over time. From a telecom point of view, they started by looking at customer data from their transaction on a mobile phone, and they used that to provide them with credit.
“A lot of us have been through that journey, and that has transitioned into our ability to use new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced tools to be able to reprofile customers to serve them better”, Mr Haruna emphasised.
According to the MML CEO, so, it is such a great opportunity, looking at data and technology at their disposal to be able to deepen the curve in terms of offering credit to people.
This is because the real economy and real-life revolve around access to credit and the ability of banks and ecosystem players to know that the funds that they are disbursing would be repaid, Mr Haruna explained.
Speaking further during the panel discussion on ‘Banking and Fintech interactions: Balancing Innovation Risks and Inclusion’, he called for a strong collaboration between financial institutions and fintech companies to develop a more robust financial ecosystem to serve their customers better.
Mr Haruna therefore encouraged stakeholders in the financial sector to collaborate rather than compete to build trust and work together to serve their various clients’ needs better.
He used the occasion to re-emphasise MobileMoney Limited’s commitment to collaborating with financial technologies (fintech) to create a smooth customer experience.
As he put it: “Mobile Money has been around for 15 years. When we began there was some resistance, but it has moved to acceptance. At the core of our success are the banks. There is an interplay between the bank and the other parties”.
We have built a good business from a transactional point of view but there is still an opportunity to do more. We are exploring innovative ways to provide clients with credit.”
Serigne Dioum, CEO of MTN Group Fintech in a fireside conversation on interoperability with the Director of Fintech and Innovation at the Bank of Ghana, Kwame Oppong, revealed that as of today, MTN’s fintech business has generated more than $1 billion, with more than 70 million active customers.
He attributed the growth of mobile money across the Group as well as globally to several levels.
These Dioum mentioned to include- investment which he explained: “As MTN, we have been investing a lot on mobile money since its beginning. We launched our mobile money platform here in Ghana back in 2009.
Before we made a profit, we invested a lot. We were interested more in driving the business, scaling it, and building the user while satisfying the customers. That was done for more than five years before it became profitable”.
So, the first growth driver is investment. MTN believes that it was a good position to drive fintech business by investing in the business to where it is today, Mr Dioum said.
The second according to him is the gap in terms of financial literacy. Another driver is the huge mobile phone penetration in Africa, about 80% of Africans have phones.
Another one is the strategy that MTN has. Where they sit together and talk about what are the needs of Africans in terms of financial inclusion and they realise that everyone needs to have a wallet.
He added that they also realized that there are a lot of businesses which have access to payments and embrace digital payments.
Mr Dioum noted the MTN team from the beginning noted that lending money via the phone to Africans was also possible.
In a separate panel, the Head of Products and Services at MobileMoney Limited, Madam Sylvia Otuo-Acheampong assured that MML is working across different layers to ensure that the security of their mobile money service is enhanced.
In another panel discussion on digital micro-pension services, Chief Enterprise Business Officer of MTN Ghana, Angela Mensah-Poku said: “One of the things, we have to understand is that even within the informal sector, constituting about 80%, 57% of its businesses are female owned and they have a very different criteria to the rest of the demographic, so therefore you need to understand your customer and build that sense of trust”.
She continued: “Telcos are in the pockets of consumers, our customers. We are there when they pay for schools, we are there when they pay for doctors, we are there when we are sending birthday gifts. We are on every single person’s phone that our customers have.
So, therefore, there is no better channel which to drive micro-pensions that insights need to come into products and services that we give to our customers”.
Madam Mensah-Poku also urged the industry companies to use better ways such as incentive schemes to retain existing and new customers to their folds.
Instructively, the 3i Africa Summit is a collaborative initiative by the Bank of Ghana, the Development Bank of Ghana, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore to showcase and stimulate Africa’s FinTech and digital potential.
The global event also focused on transforming Africa’s economic landscape through sustainable, long-term capital allocation.
It addresses the critical need for a sustainable growth framework in Africa, emphasizing inclusion and sustainability at its core.
