Technology not hindering financial inclusion, says Separovic

The Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Oradian, Antonio Separovic, said technology is not a challenge to deepening financial inclusion in Nigeria, but noted that the foundation of financial inclusion lies in providing the right tools that empower individuals and communities.

Separovic, in an interaction with journalists in Lagos at the Oradian 2024 Summit, said that having the right technology doesn’t automatically mean that everything is fixed, but he believed that the right technology is one of the enablers of financial inclusion.

He said with the right technology and right team in place, “then you create magic, that’s important.”

To enable financial institutions to work better and grow, he said Oradian, a global core banking platform SaaS provider has created innovative banking software, which assists in solving problems that are from the ground up.

Separovic, who said that Oradian focuses on emerging markets, revealed that the company has over 55 financial institutions – banks, microfinance, and digital banks, all in 13 different countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, “where we understood what these financial institutions needed,” he said.

Speaking on the cloud operations of the firm, he said the firm provides the software as well as the infrastructure, saying all a bank needs is an Internet connection to be able to use this tool.

“This tool enables financial institutions to keep track of their clients, keep track of loans, and deposits, do reporting and assist in the end-of-day process. It’s the operating system of a bank. We have all the modules that you need to be able to run and operate the bank. The entire infrastructure, the back end, the servers, the hosting, data recovery, all of this is part of the service. Again, all packaged under one subscription.”

On partnerships for effective operations, he said as a financial institution “you cannot work by yourself. What you need to do is work with others, and integrate with others. And this is where the architecture is amazing that through APIs it is very easy to integrate with other services”.

Antonio, who said he sees a change in how banks think about technology, said the next phase for Oradian is to onboard tier two banks and tier one banks. According to him, the change in how banks think about technology “requires strong leadership because you can either choose to be a technology company or you can choose to be a bank. Being both is very difficult.”