On 12 December, AFI’s Africa Regional Office (ARO) and African Financial Inclusion Policy Initiative (AfPI) hosted a webinar on Fintech and DFS Ecosystem Data for Supervision and Market Intelligence in Africa. The virtual discussion focused on how data can bolster regulatory efforts, supervision, and market intelligence, while addressing the challenges regulators face, such as incomplete, outdated, and inaccurate data.

“The Fintech or DFS sectors are rapidly transforming finance, using innovative technologies and models to change service design, development, and delivery,” said ARO Head, Nomcebo Hadebe. “This continuous evolution generates new insight into customers and market trends, including access, usage, and service quality – data we can harness to improve supervision and market intelligence.”

Representatives from the National Bank of Rwanda, Central Bank of Egypt, Central Bank of Eswatini, and Bank of Ghana all shared their experience in data collection and management.

Representatives agreed that central banks can improve data quality by upgrading platforms for automated data collection and analysis, establishing clear guidelines for data accuracy, and working closely with data protection authorities to address privacy concerns. This, they concluded, should go hand in hand with real-time monitoring and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data by well-trained staff.

GSMA Mobile for Development highlighted the importance of public-private collaboration and knowledge sharing on everything from alternative data collection for financial inclusion to the use of AI and machine learning tools for data analytics and fraud detection.

During the webinar, AFI introduced a guideline note on FinTech and Digital Financial Services Ecosystem Data for Supervision and Market Intelligence.