The rapidly expanding Financial Technology (FinTechs) is seen to pose a challenge to policy makers in the area of managing conflicting priorities such as market growth, competition, and safety in the financial system.
“Striking that balance may involve altering mature regulatory structures, defining how non-traditional financial service providers—such as technology companies and retailers—fit within these structures; creating agencies, licenses, or rules to oversee innovation; or fostering desirable financial services”, said Aishah Ahmad, deputy governor, financial system stability, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
Aishah who was represented at the CBN – Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) two-day Continuous Education Programme (CEP) in Lagos, said whichever approaches regulators choose can have substantial effects on people’s financial well-being.
“… Developments in financial technology in addition to impacting businesses could also affect the direction of regulation in the financial services industry”, Ahmad said.
Given the emerging disruptive financial technology environment and Directors’ personal accountability for their roles, she said it is pertinent that Corporate Boards are equipped with skills to perform their onerous oversight functions effectively whilst positioning their institutions for superior performance.
The FITC has trained about 6.741 directors of deposit money banks and other financial institutions (OFIs) in the directors’ education series.
Ahmad noted that FITC is leveraging on a number of initiatives to deliver specially designed board leadership training programs, in line with global standards, yet contextualized to domestic and regional issues, using empirically based practice impacting adult learning methodologies.
In her welcome remarks Lucy Newman, managing director/CEO, FITC, noted that this edition of the programme, was the 13th in collaboration with the CBN and FITCs 34th edition from 1985.
Newman who will be retiring next year after 10 years of serving as the CEO of FITC, said the session has been wonderful for her as she has learnt a lot.
She said number of participants in the FITC trainings have risen to 65,000 currently compared to a total of 28,000 when she assumed office as the managing director.
