Accenture Nigeria Innovation Index

ACCENTURE, A LEADING global professional service company, Friday launched a survey report of Nigeria’s 2018 banking and financial technology (fintech) Innovation Index.

ACCENTURE, A LEADING global professional service company, Friday launched a survey report of Nigeria’s 2018 banking and financial technology (fintech) Innovation Index. The Index, which seeks to highlight innovation role models who have woven innovation into the culture of their organisations, had a participation of 13 banks and 17 fintech companies in its maiden edition. The report showed that 85 percent of the banking secwill tor has woven innovation into its business strategy, 75 percent ideate new products or services to the new market, while 85 percent of the banking sector utilises clients and employees as active sources to harvest intelligence for innovation. The index also points out that 93 percent of the organisations surveyed indicated that innovation forms part of their business strategy, while 60 percent have a dedicated innovation unit core to their innovation process. Furthermore, 90 percent of organisations, according to the innovation index, report that they have tapped into new customer segments and 67 percent reported that their customers are buying more products and services thanks to innovation. Speaking on the reason why Accenture came up with index, Niyi Yusuf, the managing director of Accenture Nigeria, said “the reason why we started this Innovation Index is to track the organisation that is making innovative progress, report these innovations, record them for posterity, for recognition purposes, to reward their exploits and to offer support where necessary.” Yusuf also enthused on the importance of driving innovation in an economy, as it propels growth and productivity as shown in the findings. Toluleke Adenmosun, Accenture Nigeria’s Managing Director Financial services said, “these survey results help industry players to grow and expand their businesses, and also offer insight on how effective these innovations have been in helping them gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.” The research team of the firm collated all entries and shared summaries with Lagos Business School, its local research partner. During the adjudication process chaired by Yinka David-West, an associate professor at LBS, the team worked with select CSuites from tier one companies who judged the entries over a period of weeks to reveal the innovation winners in three categories for the banking and fintech space in Nigeria. The maiden award ceremony saw Wema Bank win 3 awards in the Banking sector, including Innovation Masters and innovative concept, Access Bank were joint winners alongside Wema Bank for the strategy, ideation & absorption award. In the fintech sector, Flutterwaves won the award for innovation Masters and were joints winners of alongside Paystack. According to Adenmosun, the Nigerian Innovation Index will be an annual research study, with a plan to expand to various sectors in the country including the government .