Discover our latest interview with Amand Abban, Head of Digital Banking & Alternative Delivery Channels at Advans Ghana Savings & Loans, who shares his insights on how digital innovation is reshaping financial services. Through this discussion, Advans highlights its role among international microfinance institutions, leveraging technology to strengthen micro financing in Africa and deliver more inclusive, efficient financial solutions.

We have just launched digital lending. Why is this a major milestone for Advans Ghana?
So, for us in Advans Ghana, data lending is going to be a game-changer. We believe that there is significant potential to rapidly grow our GLP, leveraging on digital loans for clients. Our objective is to be able to offer these loans to our clients through automated credit decisions. So, we are going to leverage on using AI to analyze multiple data points, credit bureau data, we are looking at their transaction data on their account or looking at their mobile money transaction history, their behavioral patterns on social media platforms. We are going to use as much data as we can to be able to score their credit score for them and from there we are going to be able to lend to them on our digital loan scheme. We seek to approach this project in two phases, So, the first phase will be to offer these digital loans to our clients and once we have proven the model, we have learned from the experiences that we’ve had lending to our clients, we will extend this to external customers as well.

What does this change in terms of your risk management?
From a risk perspective, we are going to, like we mentioned, we are going to use a lot of AI and a lot of data points to ensure that as much as possible we have very accurate credit score for these clients. And also in terms of the disbursement, it is going to be a tiered approach. So, for first time borrowers, they will be eligible for some small amount and once they have taken the loan, they have paid, they have proven their repayment history and credit worthiness, we will be able to advance much bigger loans to them. So, from a risk perspective, we will be able to analyze and build their credit history for these clients before we are able to advance them significantly bigger loans.

Tell us about your mobile phone shortcode solution: the USSD collection service.
For Advans Ghana, the USSD collection solution is our means of providing our business clients with a seamless digital payment channel via a short code. It prevents our business clients from having to juggle between multiple MNO merchant SIMs to collecting payment directly from all the various money platforms on one single short code. For Advans Ghana, it transitions us to a point of sale financial institution where we are actively involved at the point the transition is taking place, moving us from a post-sale collector position.

What do you think is driving payment innovation in Ghana?
So, a lot is happening within the digital ecosystem in Ghana. However, primarily, the payment innovation is driven by customer demand for faster, reliable and affordable payment solutions. Today, we have about 20 million active money account users in Ghana. Again, there is also a significant role being played by our regulatory bodies. So, we have the Fintech Guidelines, we have the Digital Lending Licenses, we have the Sandbox model, all from the central bank to make sure that within the payment industry, innovation is promoted and it is also promoted within a safe space. Lastly, it has to do with the existing infrastructure as well. So, thanks to the national switch, it has become the bedrock for lots of innovation to be developed on, together with the interoperability that has recently been also introduced within the country.

What are the current payment trends in West Africa?
Across West Africa today, payment innovations are driven mainly by increasing mobile money adoption for the countries. We also see a lot of cross-border payments happening. Models like the PAPSS, the Pan-African Payment and Settlement Systems, we have the direct termination of remittances into mobile money and bank accounts.
We also see a lot of QR code-based payments happening within the industry, coupled with interoperability that are happening because of the connection to national switches. So, all these factors are driving the current payment trends we see in West Africa.

How is Advans Ghana planning to leverage these opportunities ?
For Advans, I think that we are responding to these changes accordingly. We see that for Advans, we are looking at the evolution of our mobile app that is MyAdvans where we are seeking to get on self-onboarding with the eKYC and other features to make sure that we are in line with these kinds of changes that are happening within the ecosystem. Also, for other subsidiaries, we are already integrating National Switches to make sure that when it comes to payments that are leveraging on interoperability, we are there and we are not found lacking in our efforts to provide our customers with seamless payment channel. There is also discussions to partner with Fintechs for easy scale-up and to make sure that we leverage on existing technology to quickly meet the needs of our clients.

To go further, discover the interview of Julien Mahé on how Advans affirms its commitment to client protection, highlighted by the Silver Certification obtained by Advans Côte d’Ivoire,