E-Business
Technology is Future of FICA, Digitised Customer Onboarding
Digitisation is transforming business and impacting consumers through every stage of their daily lives.
While rapidly becoming a way of life, onboarding consumers digitally is still in its infancy, but is becoming a major focus for every financial institution across the country.
According to Simon Slater, chief operating officer at e4, a digital solutions company, the amendment of FICA, which now incorporates a risk-based approach to customer due-diligence, enables Accountable Institutions (AIs) to adopt their own, more flexible approach.
He said this move will quickly solve onboarding challenges as AIs, such as the banks, embrace the vital role technology can play in the process.
Slater said that technology’s role in addressing FICA requirements is rapidly growing because AIs now have more flexibility to manage compliance and risk independently.
The FICA amendment, he said, has seen a swift uptake in the use of technology solutions: “In part prompted by the rise of the fintech companies and the potential challenges posed by several new digital challenger banks, the major incumbent banks have all risen to the challenge of addressing both onboarding and compliance utilising technology solutions.”
The strength of these technology solutions, according to Slater, often lies in the use of data sources combined with intelligent rules engines, to verify customer information behind a great front-end channel. It is here that artificial intelligence will also start to feature more in onboarding solutions.
There are several components to the ultimate onboarding technology solution according to Slater.
Centred on the customer, the solution requires a simple web front-end or mobile app, that is easy to use and intuitive.
Proof of identity is next, and the solution will need a direct link to Home Affairs to verify a person’s identity. Depending on the channel, this can include the use of fingerprint biometrics, which provides a very strong real-time check, coupled with or alternatively using up to three-way facial matching of a customer’s image (enabling a ‘virtual’ face-to-face process).
A virtual video link can also be offered, coupled with liveness detection to cater for all risk levels of customer verification. Finally, technology can now also solve the challenges around income, affordability and employment verification.
To solve proof of residence, Slater said these types of technology solutions are reinventing the process digitally at new levels: “We have managed to create a marketplace for address providers to compete on a price and quality basis, to enable AIs to verify digital evidence for proof of residence, against multiple sources of addresses. This is the level of onboarding that suddenly becomes possible in a digital environment.”
Real-time approval via instant processing of new customer applications is the ultimate goal of digitised onboarding. Slater says that from a FICA perspective, the next goal is to assist AIs to address the ongoing verification of existing customers.
Often referred to as Know Your Customer (KYC), the technology solutions developed to onboard new customers can also be utilised to refresh a customer’s data based on their risk profile. This is the road ahead.”
Slater is very upbeat about the future of new technology within AIs. Sustainable solutions to help solve the ability of AIs to onboard a customer and meet their FICA requirements are finally available.
Nigerian Postal Service (NIPOST) is in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and needs urgent reforms to revive it, according to Isaac Kekemeke, board chairman of the service.
Kekemeke, who spoke at a workshop organised for NIPOST staff in Abuja yesterday, added that it is now time to go the whole hog to reform and make NIPOST fulfill its destiny to compare and compete favourably with multinational postal agencies.
“The approach may not be palatable at all times but we need to take the tough but necessary decisions to exit the intensive care unit. We are either out of ICU in good health or head for the morgue. NIPOST either functions effectively now as a commercialised state operator or gets privatised, so that myself, the PMG, and a good number of you risk the loss of our jobs,” the chairman said.
No doubt, he added, “Change is not always easy as many loathe change because of the uncertainty it brings but it is in my place to urge you all to embrace the change we advocate.”
The Internet Society’s six-month Fellowship Peering program continues to help make internet access affordable, dependable, and resilient. The program, according to the global charitable organisation, is targeted for fifteen professionals in the peering and interconnection sector.
“It offers a unique opportunity to build the skills, knowledge, and networks necessary to improve local Internet infrastructure and policy,” according to the site’s description.
The fellowship participants will participate in a comprehensive curriculum that includes virtual training sessions, collaborative forums, and technical and advocacy-based instruction on routing, Internet Exchange Points, and policy.
The fellowship culminates in attendance at a global peering event, which provides direct experience and networking opportunities with important voices in the Internet community.
The fellowship enhances participants’ impact in their particular nations by developing engagement with seasoned professionals and boosting regional and global collaboration. The program invites fellows to return to their communities prepared to expand interconnectivity, improve policy conditions, and make a meaningful contribution to the development of the Internet ecosystem.
Applicants must have at least three years of Internet experience and be based in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, or Asia-Pacific.
Eligibility also required proper travel documentation and availability to attend important events such as African Peering and Interconnection Forum, Latin American and Caribbean Network Operators Forum, or Peering Asia, as well as a commitment of roughly four hours per week over six months.
Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP) has called for the withdrawal of the amendment of the Nigeria Data Protection Act 2023 because it seeks to regulate the activities of bloggers operating within the territorial boundaries of Nigeria.
The organisation in its letter urged Mr Godswill Akpabio, Senate President, and Mr Tajudeen Abbas, Speaker of the House of Representatives, to “immediately withdraw the repressive bill.”
The titled A Bill for an Act to Amend the Nigeria Data Protection Act, 2023, to Mandate the Establishment of Physical Offices within the Territorial Boundaries of the Federal Republic of Nigeria by Social Media Platforms and for Related Matters among others intends to regulate bloggers, including by requiring all bloggers to register local offices and join recognised national association for bloggers.
Currently, the bill has passed its first and second reading in the Senate.
In the letter signed its deputy director, Mr Kolawole Oluwadare, SERAP asked Mr Akpabio and Mr Abbas “to ensure that any amendment to the Nigeria Data Protection Act promotes and protects the rights of bloggers and other journalists and does not undermine the fundamental human rights of Nigerians.”
It demanded an end to “the imposition of unnecessary restrictions on the rights of Nigerians online and Internet-based content.”
In the letter dated April 12, 2025, the group said, “This bill is a blatant attempt to bring back and fast-track the obnoxious and widely rejected social media bill by the back-door.”
“If passed, the bill would also be used to ban major social media platforms—including Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, TikTok, and independent bloggers if they ‘continuously fail to establish/register and maintain physical offices in Nigeria for a period of 30 days.
“Lawmakers should not become arbiters of truth in the public and political domain. Regulating the activities of bloggers and forcing them to associate would have a significant chilling effect on freedom of expression and lead to censorship or restraint.
“Should the National Assembly and its leadership fail to withdraw the bill to regulate the activities of bloggers, and should any such bill be assented to by President Bola Tinubu, SERAP would consider appropriate legal action to challenge the legality of any such law and ensure it is never implemented in the public interest,” the organisation warned.
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