Building a Future-Ready African Lender Means Rethinking Every Step of the Customer Journey

The question facing Africa’s financial sector is no longer whether lending should be digital. Mobile-first credit, automated loan approvals and digital onboarding have become established parts of the financial landscape across Kenya and much of the continent. The bigger question today is what makes a future-ready African lender as competition, regulation and customer expectations continue to evolve.

That question framed a panel discussion during The Future of Lending: Loan Origination, E-Sign & AI, held in Nairobi and co-hosted by Presta Technologies, Zoho and the Digital Financial Services Association of Kenya (DFSAK). The discussion brought together Kris Senanu, Executive Chairman of Smith & Berkeley; Kevin Mutiso, CEO of OYE and Chairman of DFSAK; Winnie Chira, Founder and CEO of Identify Africa; Victor Kiplagat, CEO and Co-Founder of Spin Mobile; and Kenneth Mantu, Group CEO of The Adaptis Group.

Drawing on perspectives from lending, digital identity, financial technology and organisational transformation, the panel outlined what lenders should prioritise as African digital lending enters its next chapter.

African Digital Lending Has Entered a New Stage

Digital lending has travelled a remarkable distance over the past decade.

For many Kenyans, the first formal credit they ever received came through a smartphone rather than a bank branch. Small digital loans introduced millions of borrowers to formal financial services and demonstrated that access to credit could be faster, simpler and available beyond traditional banking hours.

That first phase of digital lending focused on expanding access.

Today’s market presents a different challenge.

Banks have expanded their own digital lending services, regulators have strengthened oversight of digital credit providers, and partnerships between financial institutions and fintech companies have become commonplace. Customers, meanwhile, expect borrowing to be fast without compromising security or transparency.

The conversation is no longer about putting loans on mobile phones. It is about building lending businesses that can scale responsibly while delivering consistent customer experiences.

Digital Transformation Starts With the Entire Lending Journey

One message surfaced repeatedly throughout the discussion: digital transformation is not defined by launching a mobile application or introducing artificial intelligence into one part of the business.

Instead, it requires lenders to rethink every stage of the lending journey.

That includes customer acquisition, onboarding, identity verification, credit assessment, loan origination, disbursement, repayment and collections.

Victor Kiplagat, CEO and Co-Founder of Spin Mobile, argued that many lenders still operate across fragmented technology environments where departments rely on disconnected systems. Those silos slow decision-making, create duplicate processes and make it harder to deliver consistent customer experiences.

A future-ready lender, the panel suggested, connects these functions into a unified operating model where information moves seamlessly across the business instead of remaining trapped inside individual departments.

Data Has Become the Competitive Advantage

Technology featured prominently during the discussion, but Kris Senanu, Executive Chairman of Smith & Berkeley, argued that technology alone cannot compensate for weak information.

“Long-term sustainable businesses are not built on gut feel. They are built on data, information and trends.”

That observation captures one of the biggest changes taking place across African lending.

Traditional credit histories remain important, yet they rarely tell the full story, particularly for first-time borrowers, informal businesses and customers with limited banking records.

Alternative data—including mobile money activity, repayment behaviour and transaction patterns—is helping lenders build a richer understanding of customers who may otherwise be excluded from formal credit.

The panel also urged caution.

Data becomes valuable only when lenders understand what it actually represents. Correlations should not automatically become lending policies, and AI models require continuous monitoring to ensure they remain accurate as customer behaviour changes.

Reliable data, responsible governance and human oversight remain just as important as sophisticated algorithms.

Customer Experience Has Become a Risk Strategy

One of the discussion’s strongest themes challenged the long-standing assumption that security inevitably creates friction.

Winnie Chira, Founder and CEO of Identify Africa, argued that lenders should design onboarding experiences that remain almost invisible for legitimate customers while creating significant barriers for fraudsters.

“Make it easy for the genuine customer not to see all the security checks, while making it difficult for the fraudster to get through.”

That philosophy is becoming increasingly relevant as digital identity fraud grows more sophisticated.

Identity theft, stolen documents and AI-generated deepfakes are forcing lenders to rethink traditional Know Your Customer (KYC) processes.

Rather than applying identical verification steps to every applicant, the discussion pointed towards risk-based KYC, digital identity verification and electronic signatures that adapt security requirements according to the level of risk.

Customer experience is therefore no longer separate from fraud prevention.

For many lenders, they are becoming two sides of the same strategy.

AI Is Becoming Part of Everyday Lending Operations

Artificial intelligence was another recurring topic, although the discussion avoided treating it as a cure-all.

Instead, the panel described AI as a practical capability supporting daily operations across lending businesses.

Potential applications include anomaly detection, fraud monitoring, workflow automation, behavioural analysis and decision support.

Rather than replacing experienced credit professionals, AI helps remove repetitive manual work while allowing employees to focus on more complex lending decisions.

The discussion also reinforced that automation should never eliminate accountability.

Models require ongoing monitoring, testing and governance because customer behaviour, fraud patterns and economic conditions continue to evolve.

Lending Still Depends on People

While technology dominated much of the discussion, Kenneth Mantu, Group CEO of The Adaptis Group, argued that organisational readiness often determines whether digital transformation succeeds.

Technology can automate processes, but organisations still need employees who understand new systems, embrace different ways of working and adapt as customer expectations evolve.

Successful transformation therefore depends as much on leadership, training and change management as it does on software.

The conversation also highlighted the importance of collaboration across the financial ecosystem.

Kevin Mutiso, CEO of OYE and Chairman of the Digital Financial Services Association of Kenya, observed that customer expectations continue to evolve around speed, certainty and convenience. He also offered one of the panel’s most memorable observations.

“The largest lender in this market is actually the shopkeeper.”

The remark reflected a broader reality across many African markets: informal relationships still shape borrowing behaviour. As lenders expand their use of alternative data, understanding local context remains just as important as building more sophisticated technology.

The Next Generation of African Lenders Will Look Different

The first generation of digital lenders demonstrated that technology could widen access to formal credit.

The next generation faces a different test.

Success will depend on how effectively lenders combine trusted data, secure digital identity, intelligent automation and customer-centred design within organisations capable of adapting to constant change.

Launching a mobile app is no longer enough.

Neither is adding AI to an existing lending platform.

A future-ready African lender will be defined by how well it connects every part of the customer journey—from onboarding and identity verification to credit decisions and repayment—while balancing speed, trust and responsible governance.

That may prove to be the industry’s most important competitive advantage over the coming decade.

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