This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
In Nigeria’s rapidly evolving fintech landscape, few voices capture the balance between innovation and accountability as clearly as Adetola Onabanjo, Head of Finance at Bankly. A national prize-winning-chartered accountant who ranked second in the entire country out of more than 1,000 candidates in the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) qualifying examinations, Adetola has built her career on the belief that excellence and ethics are inseparable.
Her journey, from audit and assurance to leading finance at one of Nigeria’s most dynamic digital-finance companies reflects how technical expertise, strategic foresight, and integrity can redefine what leadership in finance looks like.
At Bankly, a fintech company digitizing cash and expanding financial access across Nigeria’s informal economies, she leads the team responsible for building the financial systems that support growth and trust. Under her guidance, Bankly has strengthened its internal controls and scaled to more than 50,000 agents nationwide, enabling millions of Nigerians to transact safely in an increasingly digital economy.
Q: You started your career in audit and assurance before moving into fintech. How did that transition reshape your view of finance?
Adetola: Audit gave me discipline. It taught me that every figure tells a story and that precision protects credibility. At KPMG, I worked on audits for some of Nigeria’s largest financial institutions, which deepened my understanding of risk, governance, and financial systems.
Moving into fintech challenged me to apply those same principles in a fast-paced, technology-driven environment. Innovation requires flexibility, but sustainable growth still depends on governance and transparency. My goal has always been to translate the rigour of traditional finance into digital systems that support inclusion at scale.
Q: You’re a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) and the Society of Women Accountants of Nigeria (SWAN). How has that background influenced your work?
Adetola: My professional training has shaped both how I think and how I lead. Qualifying as a Member of ICAN tested both my technical expertise and ethical consistency, it reinforced my belief that finance must be anchored in accountability. That foundation has guided every decision I’ve made throughout my career.
My involvement with SWAN has also been invaluable. It provided a platform for collaboration, mentorship, and advocacy. Through it, I’ve seen how diversity strengthens the profession. Leadership in finance extends beyond analysis, it’s about developing others and ensuring that ethical decision-making stays at the heart of business.
Q: What does managing finance for a rapidly scaling fintech look like in practice?
Adetola: It’s about balancing precision and agility. At Bankly, we built infrastructure to support thousands of daily transactions across cash, digital wallets, and agent operations. My responsibility was to ensure that our financial controls were strong enough to sustain growth without slowing innovation.
We implemented automated reconciliation tools for real-time verification, developed liquidity frameworks for predictable settlements, and created audit trails that made every financial activity transparent. In a network serving tens of thousands of agents, transparency isn’t optional, it’s the foundation of trust.
Q: Financial inclusion is a term often used in fintech. What does it mean to you personally?
Adetola: Inclusion is about participation and confidence. It means giving people the assurance that they can engage safely with the financial system. When a small trader, a farmer, or a household trust that their money is secure, they’re not just accessing finance, they’re gaining economic agency.
Every transaction represents more than data, it’s someone saving for a goal, paying tuition, or stabilizing a business. That human impact is what motivates me. Inclusion without accountability doesn’t last, which is why governance is central to everything we do.
Q: How do you balance governance and innovation in such a dynamic space?
Adetola: By embedding compliance into design. Manual checks can slow growth, but weak controls create risk. The solution is to build accountability into the system itself. At Bankly, we invested in digital tools for real-time monitoring and automated reporting, making transparency seamless.
Technology should make it easy to understand the logic behind the numbers. Once people can see that logic, trust follows naturally. And once there’s trust, adoption grows, that’s how inclusion deepens.
Q: You often emphasize ethics. Why is it such a core part of your leadership philosophy?
Adetola: Because finance without ethics can’t sustain progress. Technical brilliance alone isn’t enough. A system can be well-designed but still fail if decisions lack integrity. In finance, ethics is a form of risk management, it protects reputation, ensures continuity, and builds stakeholder confidence.
At times, speed and scrutiny can compete, but I’ve learned to prioritize what’s right for the system in the long term. Accountability means aligning values with execution, not just doing what’s easy.
Q: As a finance leader in a high-growth company, what lessons have stood out most for you?
Adetola: The first is that finance is about managing trust. Every process, report, and model contribute to the confidence people have in an organization.
Second, leadership in finance requires empathy. Numbers represent people, their goals, their risks, their livelihoods. Recognizing that makes decision-making more responsible.
Finally, sustainable innovation depends on discipline. Growth is only meaningful when it’s anchored in purpose. Financial systems must protect as much as they empower, that’s how inclusion endures.
For Adetola Onabanjo, finance remains a discipline defined by integrity. At Bankly, she continues to demonstrate that responsible systems, not just speed or scale, are the real engines of innovation. In a sector often driven by growth metrics, her philosophy is simple: transparency builds trust, and trust builds everything else.
