Executive Director

Aituaz Kola-Oladejo

She is a Fintech Strategist skilled in helping organizations in the financial services industry actualize their latent potentials and optimize limited resources. With 20+ years’ experience across banking operations, business development, talent management, risk management, innovation management, product management and research, she has been actively involved in several financial services industry committees charged with the responsibility of improving key aspects of the payment landscape in Nigeria.

She is currently the Executive Director of the Financial Services Innovators (FSI), a non-for-profit organization of over 3,500 innovators. At FSI, the first Fintech Industry Innovation Sandbox in Africa was built and it provides a platform for innovators to experiment with their ideas thereby lowering the barriers to entry into the financial services industry. Her role in FSI also entails helping startups settle down, succeed and grow by providing them with the right information, network and capacity building programmes.

Before the advent of FSI, she was the Head of Research and Development at the Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS), the Central Switch of the nation where she led the ‘Enhance Payment Innovation and Empower Fintech Startup’ Initiative in collaboration with the Central Bank of Nigeria. She also spent the first 12 years of her career as a banker with her experience shared between banking operations, business development and risk management.

She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom. She is also a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA). She is married with 3 children.