First Bank of Nigeria recently held the fifth edition of its Fintech Summit in Lagos, Nigeria.

The summit, which had various participants and speakers, also had Dr. Adesola Adeduntan, CEO, First Bank of Nigeria Ltd & subsidiaries, in attendance.

Speaking at the summit, Adeduntan said the idea behind the summit is to create a global platform for conversations around the future of innovation in the financial technology space.

“The Fintech Summit is organized by FirstBank to create a global platform for conversations around the future of innovation in the financial technology space. The objective is to contribute to the evolution of banking and finance service delivery,” Adeduntan said.

The fifth edition of the summit themed “Open Banking and its Derivative Opportunities in the Financial Ecosystem” had experts, policy influencers, regulatory officials as well as key and leading players in the Nigerian financial, banking, and technology climate discussing new trends, issues and solutions.

“This year’s edition themed “Open Banking and its Derivative Opportunities in the Financial Ecosystem” is an exciting and engaging one with a line-up of local and international thought leaders that spurred the conversation around the prospects for open banking. The theme recognizes the increasing pervasive role open data, cloud technology and artificial intelligence play in the financial ecosystem.” Adeduntan began.

Continuing, he said, Open banking today demonstrates the practical fusion of these variables, presenting remarkable potentials that can redefine product development, customer experience and overall value creation; with multiplier effects for both players and consumers.

The Regulatory Framework for Open Banking in Nigeria, issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria on the rules and premises under which financial data sharing can take place across the financial ecosystem and the National Information Technology Development Agency’s (NITDA) Nigerian Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) 2019, are demonstrations of the future of regulations around Open Banking.”

Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe, the Lead Faculty of Tekedia Institute led the discussion as the Keynote speaker. Ekekwe spoke on the “Open Banking: The Grand Unification of Application Utility Age”. He noted that Open banking is a platform where banks are required to share their market data through APIs, which are third-party companies to help drive innovation. The quest to getting better in any industry is to build better data systems to be able to understand the numbers around that industry.

He said: “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 including insurance, mortgage, etc to drive the new age of application utility era which I expect to be massive.”

Adeduntan also noted that ‘as an institution of 127 years and having traversed a series of regulatory transformations over the years, FirstBank will continue to play its role in furthering conversations to refine regulatory frameworks and shape thoughts on industry and societal developments.