Some of these are founders of fincumbents, fintech companies that have been existing for over three decades while others are a few new unicorns, startups valued at $1 billion and above.

The four institutions are the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), Shared Agent Network Expansion Facilities (SANEF), Ecobank PLC and Digital Encode, a frontline cybersecurity firm in Africa that has endeared itself to the young community in the cybersecurity space in Nigeria.

The ten individuals recognised are Abubakar Suleiman, MD/CEO, Sterling Bank Plc, Austin Okere – the founder and Executive Vice Chairman, Computer Warehouse Group Plc, Dr Yele Okeremi, the co-founder and CEO of Precise Financial Systems, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, the founder of Future Africa as well as John Obaro, the founder and Group CEO, Systemspecs Holdco.

Others are Mrs. Kofo Akinkungbe, the founder and CEO of SecureID, Mitchell Elegbe, the founder and Group CEO, of Interswitch Group, Musa Jimoh, Director, Payments System Policy and Oversight at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olugbenga Agboola, co-founder and CEO, Flutterwave, and Sir Ademola Aladekomo, the founder of Chams Plc.

Speaking on behalf of the recipients, Sir Aladekomo said, “Thank you for this honour. It is appreciated. Best wishes for future outings.”

Sola Fanawopo, the Event Director for the Nigerian Fintech Awards explained that the Special Recognition cut across generations of dreamers, doers, and drivers of the Fintech industry in Nigeria.

“Some of the individuals recognised are founders of fincumbents that have been around for over two to three decades while the rest are founders of the new few unicorns.“

Fanawopo said the Nigerian Fintech Awards was founded in 2012 and are dedicated to honouring excellence in financial technologies and services companies and products.

He added that the awards provide public recognition for the achievements of Fintech companies and products in many categories.

These categories include payments, personal finance, wealth management, fraud protection, banking, lending, regtech, insurtech, and more.

“The Nigerian Fintech Awards has no tie with any fintech company. This means that our decisions and actions are independent of any interest or operational restrictions. The ethos of the awards is in line with this freedom,” he said.

According to him, to celebrate the Nigerian Fintech industry was in order as the 2021 Fintech Times report has shown, Nigeria’s fintech landscape comprised 210 to 250 fintech companies, key stakeholders (banks, telecom companies and the government), enablers and funding partners (i.e universities and research institutions, investors, incubators, technology, and consumers).

The entry opens on Thursday July 28^th and closes on Monday October 3^rd, 2022. 

The award ceremony will take place at the prestigious Oriental Hotel, Lagos on November 4^th, 2022.

The Nigerian Fintech Awards are dedicated to honouring excellence in financial technologies and services companies and products.

The Awards provide public recognition for the achievements of FinTech companies and products in categories including Payments, Personal Finance, Wealth Management, Fraud Protection, Banking, Lending, RegTech, InsurTech, and more.

 Nigerian Fintech Awards Categories:

1.   CONSUMER & CORPORATE BANKING

a.  Best Retail Internet-Banking Platform

For a bank with a secure, innovative, and customer-friendly internet banking platform.

b.  Best Digital Onboarding Platform

For a bank or fintech with an innovative end-to-end digital onboarding system that enables the seamless verification of customer identity and address in real-time.

c.   Best Corporate Internet Banking Platform

For a bank or fintech digital corporate internet platform that increases conversions, captures more customers, and drives Digital revenue

d.  Best Mobile Banking

For a bank with the most robust, most secured, and efficient mobile banking service

e.   Best in Cash Automation

For a bank with a real-time cash inventory system that Improves productivity, customer service, and fund efficiency.

f.    Best Innovation in Agency Banking

For a bank, a mobile money operator (MMO), or a Super Agency firm with the most innovative, secured, and customer-friendly agency banking operations.

2.  CONSUMER LENDING

a.  Best Consumer Lending Platform

For a fintech or bank with an innovative and scalable consumer-lending platform.

b.  Best Consumer Lending Product

For a fintech or bank with an impacting lending product. 

c.    Best Consumer Lending Company

 For non-bank lending company with an innovative approach to consumer lending

d.  Best Loan Data Service Provider

For a credit bureau service provider or a loan data service provider with innovative and impacting solutions.

e.   Best Peer-to-Peer Lending Platform

For a peer-to-peer lending platform that is fairly impacting both sides of the business.

f.    Innovation Award for Consumer Lending

For the most innovative consumer lending service provider.

3.  BUSINESS LENDING

a.  Best Business Lending Platform

For a fintech or a bank with an innovative and impactful business/corporate lending platform.

b.  Best Business Lending Platform

For a fintech or a bank with an innovative and impactful business/corporate lending platform.

c.   Best Small Business Lending Solution

For a fintech or a bank with a dynamic small business lending solution.

d.  Best Overall LendTech Company

For the most outstanding lendTech company.

4.  WEALTH MANAGEMENT

a.  Best Wealth Management Platform

For a firm that provides a secure, efficient, and cost-effective investment platform.

b.  Best Wealth Management Product

For a firm that provides secure, efficient, and cost-effective investment solutions.

c.   Best Wealth Management Company

For an outstanding firm that provides a secure, efficient, and cost-effective investment platform for her customers.

5.  PERSONAL FINANCE

a.  Best Personal Finance Platform

For fintech that delivers a platform that helps customers become more efficient at managing money as well as meet long-term financial goals

b.  Best Personal Finance Product

For fintech with a personal finance product or solution that helps customers become more efficient at managing money as well as meet long-term financial goals

6.  PAYMENTS

a.  Best Consumer Payments Platform

For a fintech or a bank that provides a payment platform that accepts payments, sends payouts, settle funds, globally connected, innovative, flexible, reliable and secure. The platform must also enable easy plugin integration, and data protection, increase sales and minimize operation costs.

b.  Best Consumer Payments Product

For a fintech or a bank that provides a payment product or solution that is innovative, flexible, reliable, and secure.

c.   Best Consumer Payments Company

For a fintech or a bank with outstanding payment services for individuals, corporates, and governments.

7.   CONSUMER PAYMENTS

a.  Best Point of Sale Company

For a fintech firm that provides innovative, secure, and efficient point of sale services.

b.  Best Small Business Payments Solution

For a Fintech or a bank that provide innovative and robust payment solution to small businesses.

c.   Best Credit Card Payments Solution

For a bank that provides an innovative and secured credit card solution

d.  Best Government Payments Platform

For a fintech that provides an innovative, efficient and secure payment platform for G2G, G2P, G2B payments.

8.  INVESTMENTS

a.  Best Retail Investment Platform

For a platform that creatively and sustainably enables individuals to invest in asset classes like bonds, stocks, or mutual funds

b.  Best Retail Investment Company

For a company provides outstanding retail investment services for individuals. 

c.   Best Stock Trading App

For a mobile application that creatively and sustainably gives investors the confidence to venture into the stock market without constant spoon-feeding.

d.  Best Institutional Investment Platform

For a platform that creatively provides institutional investors convenience and quick execution in placing orders anytime and anywhere

e.   Best Institutional Investment Solution

For the product or a solution that makes it easy for institutions to invest in stocks, bonds, and other assets.

9.  CONSUMER BANKING

a.  Best Consumer Banking Mobile App

For a bank with the most creative and secure mobile banking app that offers quick and instant banking and payments services. 

b.  Best Digital Bank

For a digital bank that provides convenient account opening in minutes, intuitive loan applications, scheduled payments, personal digital card management, trustworthy security, and Personal Finance Management (PFM).

c.   Innovation in Banking Award

For a bank with outstanding innovative culture in banking services.

10.  FINANCIAL RESEARCH AND DATA

a.  Best Overall Analytics Platform

For an analytic platform that provides simple, scalable, and accurate insights to drive the integration of data.

b.  Best Risk Management Service

For a firm that provides outstanding risk management services for the industry.

c.   Best Risk Management Platform

For a platform that sees risks that are not apparent, reduces business liability and provides insights and support for the Board of Directors

d.  Best Financial Research and Data Company

For a company that provides outstanding research and data services for the industry.

e.   Outstanding Legal Service Award

For a legal firm that provides outstanding legal services to the industry.

11. BANKING INFRASTRUCTURE

a.  Best Banking Infrastructure Platform

For a digital banking platform that creatively and sustainably digitizes bank operations, facilitates digital customer interactions, and allows banks to offer a host of digital financial products.

b.  Best Banking Infrastructure Software

For a core banking software offering a unified banking experience anytime, anywhere, on any device.

c.   Best Open Banking API

For the most outstanding Open Banking API in the industry.

12. IDENTITY AND PRIVACY

a.  Best Identify Verification Solution

For a solution or product that enables the seamless verification of customer identity and address in real-time.

b.  Best ID Management Platform

For an identity platform that manages the identities of users and devices in a centralized fashion.

c.   Best Identity as a Service (IaaS) Platform

For a platform that provides services like provisioning, risk, and even monitoring and identity governance for a complex business.

d.  Best Credential Management Solution

For a firm with an outstanding credential management solution that demonstrates the ability to validate the identity of online consumers and internal privileged users among others.

e.   Best Overall Digital Identity Solution Provider

For an organization that delivers outstanding identity solution to clients in the fintech and banking sector.

13. FRAUD PREVENTION AND TRANSACTION SECURITY

a.  Best Fraud Prevention Platform

For a platform that detects emerging fraud to uncover anomalies and patterns quickly and more accurately, and lowers fraud operations costs by reducing chargeback and manual review rates.

b.  Best Fraud Prevention Company

For a company that provides outstanding fraud prevention services to fintech and banks.

c.   Fraud Prevention Innovation Award

For a fintech or bank that creatively and innovatively deploys fraud prevention solutions.

Best Financial Transaction Security Platform

14. CROWDFUNDING

a.  Best Crowdfunding Platform

For a platform that creatively enables individuals and organizations to raise money to finance projects and businesses from a large number of people via online platforms.

b.  Best Crowdfunding Company

For an outstanding crowdfunding firm that enables individuals and organizations to raise money via online platforms.

15. INSURTECH

a.  Best InsurTech Solution

For a product or solution that simplifies underwriting, with automated processes and also delivers a new distribution method.

b.  Best InsurTech Company

For a carrier that uses technology to improve insurance products, innovate the sector and drive efficient services.

c.   Best InsurTech Startup

For an InsurTech startup that provides cutting-edge insurance services to the customers  

d.  InsurTech Innovation Award

For a carrier that demonstrates outstanding innovation culture at all level of its services.

16. REGTECH

a.  Best RegTech Solution

For a firm that helps fintech and banks to comply with regulations efficiently, and less expensive.

b.  Best RegTech Startup

For a Regtech startup that help fintech and banks to monitor, report, and comply with the regulation that usually would take a lot of time and cost if conducted manually

c.   RegTech Innovation Award

For a fintech or a bank that is creatively employing RegTech services to comply with regulations efficiently and less expensively

17. CRYPTOCURRENCY

a.  Best Cryptocurrency Purchasing Site

For a website that provides easy transactions, incredible security, short settlement times, and low fees for cryptocurrency transactions.

b.  Best Cryptocurrency Exchange

For the crypto exchange that offers a large number of supported cryptocurrencies and a high level of security. In addition, it must be a beginner-friendly platform and provides an advanced trading platform, making it a good option for professional traders as well.

c.   Best Cryptocurrency Wallet

For a crypto wallet that provides a good mix of security tools and user-facing features at a reasonable.

20. INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP

a. Best Employee Benefits Solution

For an HR and Payroll platform that gives users access to a wide range of services

b. Best FinTech CEO

For an outstanding Fintech CEO that has impacted the industry in many ways.

c.   Best Female Fintech CEO

For an outstanding female Fintech (FemTech) CEO that has impacted the industry in many ways.

d.  Best FinTech Startup

For a trendsetting and fast-growing fintech startup that is not more than three years old.  

e.   Best Employee Benefits Package

For a fintech firm that implements an innovative employee benefits package.

f.    Best Overall FinTech Software

For a financial software firm that has deployed software that helps fintech and banks improve operational efficiency.

g.   Best Overall FinTech Mobile App

For a fintech app that helps customers perform the following conveniently: personal finance, crowdfunding, money lending, investment, money transfer, P2P (peer-to-peer) lending, and more.

Hosted by one of Africa’s oldest and most impacting publication on financial technology, Fintech Africa, the awards recognise excellence in product designs and service deliveries in the financial technologies during the awards ceremony later in the last quarter of 2022.

Hailed as the “Fintech’s finest honour” by past winners, the gong recognises various achievements of Fintech companies and products in major categories.

Few of the standout groups in the pool are payments, personal finance, wealth management, fraud protection, banking, lending, regulatory and insurtech.

Some past winners of the Nigerian Fintech Awards have been Xpress Payment Solutions, Renmoney, and Zedvance among others.

The 2022 edition of the awards will hold at the prestigious Oriental Hotel on November 4. This is the 10th anniversary of the awards.

Former CEO of Renmoney, Oluwatobi Boshoro, had said the award is an affirmation of Renmoney’s efforts to seek innovative ways of serving its customers. “This award is a testament to the creative and innovative work that everyone on the Renmoney team is doing to ensure that our customers are well served.”

Sola Fanawopo, the Editor-in-Chief of Fintech Africa publication said that, “We are excited to announce that the 2022 Nigerian Fintech Awards ceremony will take place at the prestigious Oriental Hotel, Lekki.

“As the tenth year of the awards, this is the perfect platform for fintech companies to celebrate their achievements with partners, friends, and colleagues. The ceremony also offers a high networking opportunity to mix with the leading fintech professionals.”