Women in business: Ayo Olojede

Ayo Olojede is the Group Head, Emerging Businesses at Access Bank, where she is leading and pioneering digital transformational changes to evolve the business model in a complex organisation. She is responsible for the strategy formulation to deliver the bottom line factor of the division.

She possesses about 20 years’ experience in managing MSMES across Africa and North America at HSBC, Skye Bank (now Polaris) and Diamond Bank prior to joining Access Bank. She is very passionate about the sustainable growth of MSMEs and possesses strong knowledge and hands on experience of best practices in SME banking, product development, lending, payments, value added services, marketplace ecosystems and innovations to expand financial access to MSMEs, women led businesses and youth entrepreneurship. Her work has achieved recognition for ‘Best In Class’ SME specific credit assessment methodology, both locally and internationally to expand lending to “new to borrowing”.
She is a member of the bank’s digital council which has the responsibility for the bank’s digital strategy and monitoring of the implementation of digital initiatives.

Ayo was Head, Emerging Businesses at Diamond Bank before becoming Group Head, Emerging Businesses at Access Bank.

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As Head, Retail Banking Group at Skye Bank Plc, her responsibility was to sustain the growth momentum in the retail franchise business, to increase market share and achieve profitable growth with technology led value offerings. Growth plans included transformational initiatives to create operational excellence in their process, people, products and channels.

Also, as Head, Small Business Group at Skye Bank, Olojede was a strategic product leader for the business with core responsibility for market segmentation, business strategy, product/value offerings, definition of credit and risk management frameworks, budget ownership and so on.

Still at Skye Bank Plc, as Business Development Manager, she was responsible for managing a high street branch with a staff of more than 40 employees. She also provided direct leadership to 12 relationship managers and support in developing multi-product client relationships.
Furthermore, while being the Manager, Business Banking at HSBC Bank Canada, her primary responsibility included identifying business opportunities and acting as a business advisor for a client portfolio of new and existing businesses of international profile, in partnership with subject matter experts.

She was also the former Head, Relationship Management at Prudent Bank Plc, where she was responsible for supervising a team of five members that sourced, maintained and enhanced profitability of business and commercial accounts. She managed, retained and significantly grew major accounts.

Ayo leverages strong communication and employee engagement skills to drive execution in a focused and coordinated manner.

She is a university scholar, a Fellow Chartered Accountant, and holds an MBA degree from Kellogg School of Management, Evanston.

She speaks globally on SME finance, payments, business services and digital innovations.