Innovectives, a third generation and last mile FinTech Company, has disclosed of its 2019 target to spur financial inclusion through minimum account opening of over five million for its bank partners while it will also recruit over 50,000 new merchants.
Last year, the Lagos-based integrated Fintech company, which is a Payment Facilitator, licensed Agent Banking Services Provider, inter-bank Payment Aggregator, as well as a certified mobile Point of Sale solution provider recorded over 1.2 million transactions worth over N8 billion on its agency banking platform.
The company’s Chief Executive, Emmanuel Agha, speaking on Innovectives target said “our target for 2019 is to record ten million transactions worth N10 billion.”
The Fintech company which aims to take financial services and payments to the under banked and unbanked areas or the segment referred to as the last mile, where banks really do not have presence, is a super agent licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
As part of measures towards achieving the set 80 percent financial inclusion target by 2020, CBN licensed some companies as super agents.
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Agha while speaking on the company’s 2018 performance said “last year we travelled far and wide to many of the rural and semi-rural communities in our country where more than half of our population still reside,” this was in order to better understand the distinct peculiarities affecting consumption of organized financial services.
He cited that on these trips they came face to face with the gaping needs and how they have crippled the micro economy.
“We identified the lack of fit-for-purpose and sustainable initiatives to stimulate the demand side of digital financial services. The disproportionately higher number of financially excluded, economically active adults and non-existent access to credit to the productive segment of our society was indicators that we had to raise our game,” Agha told BusinessDay in a mailed response.
“These gaps are not new but the scale and impact on the micro economy calls for intentional and systematic interventions,” he mentioned.
The mail from the Fintech Company read that in 2018, it was able to increase the number of FIs and NFIs connected to Kesh Express, its agency banking platform, from four to seventeen.
“Today, Kesh Express is connected to Zenith, GTBank, Access Bank, Stanbic IBTC, UBA, Ecobank and Cowries Microfinance Bank. Wema, Sterling and Jaiz Banks will be live in two weeks. We also connected to NIPOST IFS, Angaza, Masterpass, mVisa, Quickteller, NIBSS and Remita platforms,” as compiled from the company’s response.
Its target for 2019 is therefore to achieve 100 percent connection to all retail-focused deposit money banks, major micro-finance banks and international remittance platforms.
“2018 was the year we were able to affirm the agility of our integrated and aggregative strategy for agency banking business through our participation in the Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF), a project powered by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Bankers Committee and NIBSS,” Agha said.
According to the Tech driven financial institution, the company has been able to recruit over 25,000 agents across the 36 states, out of which over 10,000 agents are connected and actively carrying out financial transactions for customers on its platform.
It plans to speed up agents onboarding process and therefore increase the number of activated agents from 10,000 to 50,000.
“Amongst several other services, our agents have been able to open over 750,000 bank accounts for various banks connected to our aggregated, integrated and shared Kesh Express agent platform.”
Oluwasegun Olakoyenikan
