In this interview, we spoke with Gregoire Danel-Fedou, CFO & DCEO, and Estelle Darie-Rousseau, COO & DCEO of Advans Group, about their digital innovation journey. Through programs like R+, Advans leverages technology to enhance microfinance and improve SME financing in Africa, enabling more efficient and impactful support for entrepreneurs across multiple countries.

Gregoire Danel-Fedou, CFO & DCEO, Advans Group

How was the Air+ Program first initiated ? Why is it crucial to build our innovativation strategy on digital?

What we call the Advans Innovation Roadmap program, which is called R+, was basically launched in 2020 to support our ambition to increase our impact, increase our outreach, and to do so more efficiently. So more specifically, our ambition is to try to increase our outreach in entrepreneurs and serve them digitally with adapted financial services. We also want to work more efficiently, meaning spend our time on value-added tasks or on specific risk area and focus our attention on these areas. And we want to do that thanks to digitised processes.

Probably the most important is that we want to embrace and leverage data, meaning we want to better understand our client. We want to have faster loan decision. We want to, you know, really have sharp information on our business performance and also on our impact so that we can take the best decision possible going forward. So that’s basically what R+ is about. And I think more importantly, it will give us more agility to innovate in the future.

Estelle Darie-Rousseau, COO & DCEO, Advans Group

How can a group successfully conduct change based on digitalisation?

R+ is a very large program because it’s spanning over several countries. It’s going to impact 4,000 staff in almost all their work processes. And it entails a large suite of digital solutions.

In such large programs, there are a few ingredients which are really important for success:

The first one is always to take into account processes. Why? Because it’s the only way you can choose the adequate solutions. And it’s also the only way you can actually cater for the changes that all stakeholders will kind of encounter in this adventure.

The second point is that when you don’t have the luxury to rely only on internal teams, and it’s very rarely the case, you have to manage dependency with vendors. This is very important in a digitization program. One shall not think that because you externalize some services or because you buy off-the-shelf solutions, you don’t need internally to structure your teams, to get some competencies, to document what you are doing.

And perhaps I would conclude by saying that technology and digitization very often offer a lot of opportunities. But one of our roles in such program is to always refocus, reprioritize, because the simpler is always the better. Indeed.

By embracing digitization, Advans Group strengthens its ability to serve clients and manage risk while expanding outreach. This demonstrates how international microfinance institutions can combine micro lending Africa strategies with innovative digital solutions to drive inclusion, efficiency, and sustainable growth.