Bridging the widening gap between those who have access to credit through digital lending and others will be the focus of an international AI summit scheduled to be held this month.

Organised by DataIntell, a decentralised platform and community dedicated to empowering aspiring, passionate and professional STEM individuals, the virtual summit will focus on artificial intelligence (AI) bias, a critical challenge that could determine who gets access to credit.

The summit will connect leading academics from the UK and Nigerian universities, as well as fintech professionals, to tackle algorithmic fairness in financial services.

Currently, Nigeria has over 436 licensed platforms with a market value of N2.7 billion, serving millions of borrowers and offering unprecedented opportunities for financial inclusion in the country, where an estimated 60 million people remain unbanked.

However, it has been discovered that an AI-powered lending algorithm designed to make instant credit decisions can inadvertently discriminate against qualified borrowers.

The virtual summit, titled ‘From Bias to Fairness: Building Trustworthy AI in Fintech’, will feature industry experts and academic researchers, including Dr Hiba Alsmadi, a lecturer in AI and Data Visualisation, Teesside University, who will speak on ‘Navigating framework to build bias-resistant Fintech AI’.

Mark Rudak of GiniMachine will present a paper on ‘AI Transparency and Bias in Credit Scoring: GiniMachine’s Approach’, while Naomi Nour, Head of AI Engineering at TotalLab, will discuss Responsible Deployment of LLMs in Financial Contexts’.