Africa’s financial services sector is entering one of the most significant transitions in its history. Artificial intelligence, digital lending, behavioural analytics and open banking are rapidly changing how financial institutions assess borrowers, price risk and extend credit.
Yet amid all this advancement, one lesson stood out during the recent East African Banking School Conference held at Diani, Kenya: the future of lending will not be determined by technology alone, but by the ability to combine data, human judgement and responsible finance.
For many years, lending decisions largely depended on collateral, financial statements and the experience of credit officers. Today, those traditional indicators are increasingly being complemented by behavioural data, mobile money transactions, digital footprints and machine learning models. Financial institutions can now analyse thousands of data points within seconds to estimate the probability of default.
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