The foundation of financial inclusion lies in providing the right tools that empower individuals and communities while enabling financial institutions to thrive, Antonio Separovic, CEO and Co-Founder of Oradian, told BusinessDay.
Financial inclusion is a state where individuals and businesses have access to financial products and services like savings, loans, easy payment systems and insurance.
Antonio said though having the right technology on its own doesn’t automatically mean that everything is fixed, but he believed that the right technology is one of the enablers of financial inclusion.
“If you have the right technology in place and you have the right team in place, then you create magic, that’s really important”, he said at Oradian’s summit 2024, an exclusive gathering of Nigeria’s top financial minds and industry leaders.
“We believed that if we give the right tools to the right types of financial institutions, they can actually have fantastic growth.”
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 to solve problems that are from the ground up.
Antonio who said that Oradian focuses on emerging markets said the company has over 55 financial institutions – banks, microfinance, digital banks, all in 13 different countries in Africa and Southeast Asia, “where we understood what these financial institutions needed”, he said.
According to him, being a cloud system means that “we provide the software as well as the infrastructure. As a bank, all you need 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, deposits, do reporting and assist in the end of day process. Basically 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, integrate with others. And this is where the architecture is amazing that through APIs it’s very easy to integrate with other services”.
Antonio who said he sees a change of how banks think about technology said the next phase for Oradian is to on-board tier two banks and tier one banks. According to him, the change of 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”.
On what appears to be carefulness over frauds or fear by some banks to outsource certain services, Antonio instead linked it to ‘attitude’, saying that some banks want to own everything and do everything by themselves which limits how they grow. “So what we see is why fintechs are stronger than banks in certain areas, moving fast”.
The Summit attended by representatives of banks and fintech companies provided a first-hand look at Oradian’s roadmap and showcased ground-breaking innovations, including Oradian Custom Code, aimed at empowering financial institutions to scale and innovate fast, securely, and efficiently in ways that traditional systems cannot offer.
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