- Says there are credible opportunities in Nigeria
- Takes “risk” and “fraud” prevention very seriously
- Wants government to support initiative similar to Open Banking in the UK
It’s a pleasure to have you, Emilio Vacca to share your wealth of experience operating as a lender, granting credit facilities to Nigerians, but what has been your experience so far operating in Nigeria?
Mr. Emilio Vacca is the Chief Executive Officer of Carbon, a financial institution that provides instant loans, credit facility and personal financial management tools for the Nigerian market. In this interview with Starconnect Media, Vacca shares his experience in Nigeria and his march towards operating as a full-fledged bank. Excerpts.
The Nigerian market is amazing and there are incredible opportunities. It goes without saying that we are not the only one who noticed that, so there are many competitors but I believe we are doing well because we really care about our customers and we want to have a positive impact on their daily lives.
There are also challenges, like the fact that the transactional infrastructure is fragmented and not always reliable, but the country is progressing rapidly and I am sure the infrastructure will follow constantly moving target.
I understand you are contemplating operating as a fully-fledged bank in Nigeria and possibly expand into other African countries but how prepared are you to begin operation in Nigeria?
We are working hard to make sure that our platform is ready to offer the best services to customers in many other African countries. As you can imagine there are multiple challenges like the need to operate respecting different compliance rules and laws, to integrate with multiple partners for things like KYC and payments.
At the same time the Nigerian market is our core market deeply into our hearts: once we can start operating as a fully-fledged bank we will have to make a number of changes, starting with how we manage wallet and savings: my teams are working to be ready for that. We are implementing changes across the board in our technical ecosystem so that when we are ready from a commercial and regulatory point of view we can start operations in the most seamless way with the minimum impact for our customers.
As we want to expand our operations and take our product across various regions, AWS has been critical to enabling this. Its solutions will give us the speed to market we desire by providing flexibility and agility. Cloud technology as a whole is the future and banks today are doing away with legacy systems.
What are your areas of core competence?
I worked in many industries and sectors like consultancy, healthcare, fashion, media and that helped me getting a sense of how to operate in a fast changing business like Fintech. I covered many roles, from software engineer, system architect, security expert, project manager and I would say that I am able to understand technology end to end, from backend to frontend. Things that help me in my daily job are a deep knowledge of mobile (both iOS and Android), huge experience in system design (at the Enterprise and SME level), profound knowledge (and love!) with Agile and lean product management.
I also have experience as a designer, starting from the times where we did not use a computer to design a magazine to designing a mobile app used by hundreds of thousands of people a few years ago. I think that this broad knowledge, acquired in many years, is key to be able to lead a team of very skilled people and organise their work in the most efficient way.
You are leveraging on technology to advance your services, what has been the reception and effectiveness of some of these advanced technology, specifically your facial recognition technology in Nigeria?
Our customers understand the importance of safety and security, and their reaction to our use of Amazon Rekognition to achieve that for them when doing identity verification has been very positive. We rely mainly on Amazon Rekognition which has proven invaluable in fulfilling our goals: it is extremely accurate, fast, easy to integrate and incredibly reliable.
We take “risk” and “fraud” prevention very seriously and our association with AWS allowed us to move faster than we ever thought thanks to their advanced and fully AWS integrated solution. The fact that it is a cloud-based solution gives us the flexibility we need to scale up vertically and horizontally.
The banking sector in Nigeria is one of the most volatile sector, many big players have come and gone, not too long ago, the Central Bank gave approval to few others to operate, do you fall within these new approvals and what are you offering that is lacking in other Nigerian banks?
I cannot say much because we don’t want to ruin the surprise for our customers, but I can tell you we are here to stay and be successful and the main reason is that our customers are loyal, they know what they want and we are here to provide them with the best range of solutions and products.
High interest rates in double digit is a major problem in the banking sector, what special plans are you offering for SMEs and indeed the manufacturing sector?
Nonflexible repayments is something that plagues SMEs and puts pressure on their business. They want to be able to determine how best they can pay back their loans in a timely fashion, we have addressed this by allowing these businesses pay back on a daily, weekly or monthly basis as they deem fit, providing them with the flexibility they seek. Also we do not charge the entire interest due when it’s an early repayment. If a loan tenor is 3 months, but was paid back in 1 month, the interest due is only for that month and not the entire tenor that requested.
As an international player in the financial sector, are there policies that government would need to put in place to enable banks in Nigeria operate like their counterparts in China, India and some of the most advance economies in the world?
I would expect the government to support an initiative similar to Open Banking in the UK…that would allow many players to enter the market with a different mission and it would be definitely beneficial for everyone, especially the customers that will have more choices. I really appreciate the actions the Government is taking to force any partner to respect the BVN requirements: that is a fundamental thing to have a safer market and will help startups like Carbon to operate in a better way.
Is there any other thing you would want to say regarding your operation and aspiration now and in future?
We want in future to offer more services to our customers: our initial product, Paylater, was focused on lending and people referred to that brand as a lending company. With Carbon, we want to expand our horizons and offer a wide range of financial services to our customers. We want a product so useful that our customers cannot live without. AWS is an integral part of making our expansion possible with its multitude of available solutions that remove technology barriers.
