Business
EXPERTS say Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to continuously improve access to finance through faster and more personalised credit assessment.
They said this at the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) Techpreneur Summit themed: “Innovate to Capital” in Lagos.
The Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of PiggyVest, Odunayo Eweniyi, said that AI would not stifle innovation, if deployed responsibly and supported with quality data.
She said that AI systems only reflected the quality of data and human decisions used in building them.
“AI is only as good as the people training it. Tech exacerbates what you give to it.
“If your decision making was innately biased as a person, you feed that to a machine, it learns it and turns out biased decision making at scale,” she said.
Eweniyi said ethical AI usage was closely linked to human ethics and organisational values.
According to her, individuals should be able to challenge decisions made through AI-driven systems.
“Ordinarily, people should be able to contest a credit decision about them, whether or not AI made it.
“A human should be able to appeal, so when AI makes decisions, humans should still be able to appeal,” she said.
Also speaking, the Chief Product Officer of Credit Direct Limited, Mr Nifemi Oluboyede, said AI was improving the speed and precision of credit decisions.
He said lenders could now process multiple customer data points in real time and provide financial products tailored to individual needs.
According to him, AI was enhancing existing credit assessment processes rather than replacing human judgement.
“What we’ve done with AI is to speed up that process more than it is replacing the human-centeredness around it.
“At the end of the day, there is definitely that need for that human eyeball,” he said.
Earlier in her remarks, Mrs Ijeoma Ozulumba, Executive Director, Finance and Corporate Services, DBN, said technology-driven Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) remained critical to Nigeria’s economic growth.
According to her, Nigeria’s technology ecosystem continue to record remarkable growth, particularly in finance, climate solutions and innovation-driven businesses.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that DBN was established to improve access to finance, technical assistance and capacity-building support MSMEs in Nigeria. (NAN)
A.I
June 12, 2026
Tags: Development Bank of Nigeria Odunayo Eweniyi Piggyvest