Artificial intelligence is improving access to finance by speeding up and personalizing credit assessments, experts said at the Development Bank of Nigeria (DBN) Techpreneur Summit in Lagos. As lenders integrate these tools, finance professionals must balance automation with human oversight to prevent biased decision-making at scale.
Balancing automation and human oversight
Odunayo Eweniyi, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of PiggyVest, addressed the risks of deploying automated systems without rigorous data standards. She warned that algorithms simply mirror the humans who build them. "AI is only as good as the people training it," Eweniyi said. "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."
To mitigate this risk, she argued that organizations must maintain human accountability. Customers must retain the right to challenge automated outcomes. "A human should be able to appeal, so when AI makes decisions, humans should still be able to appeal," she said. Finance professionals can explore AI for Finance resources to better evaluate automated credit models and maintain ethical standards.
Enhancing credit assessment speed
Nifemi Oluboyede, Chief Product Officer of Credit Direct Limited, highlighted the operational benefits of these systems. He noted that lenders can now process multiple customer data points in real time to tailor financial products. "What we've done with AI is to speed up that process more than it is replacing the human-centeredness around it," Oluboyede said. He emphasized that technology enhances existing credit assessment workflows rather than eliminating the need for human review.
Why this matters for finance professionals
Financial institutions are increasingly adopting machine learning to evaluate micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). Professionals in this sector must ensure their data training sets are free of historical bias before deploying models. Those managing financial planning and automation should consider targeted training, such as an AI Learning Path for Finance Managers, to build the skills required to audit and oversee these automated systems effectively.
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