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By Ebunoluwa Sessou

Africa’s Wealth Coach, Omilola Oshikoya has called on owners of Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, especially women to acquire financial education in order to overcome financial barriers and inadequacies in the business world.

Caption: Omilola Oshikoya, Founder of The Tech World of Finance with her partners -to her left – PiggyVest (represented by Joshua Chibueze – Co-founder PiggyVest), to her right- The Association of International Certified Professional Accountant’s (represented by Ijeoma Anadozie – Associate Director, Nigeria), her extreme right – Access Bank (represented by Chinonye Udechukwu – Segment Effectiveness Executive).

With the launch of the online financial platform, Tech World of finance which was founded last year, she said, the online financial education platform is focused on reducing the financial inclusion gap, the financial literacy gap and the unemployment rate in Nigeria and Africa thereby reducing poverty and creating wealth.

According to her, the platform is to help entrepreneurs as well as business owners to be able to save money and be financially relevant and stable among their contemporaries.

“The goal is to be the go-to online financial education platform for millennials where they can become financially literate in the 18.8 per cent in July 2017 and 69 per cent of Nigerians living below the poverty line in 2019 according to OXFAM, is because of a lack of financial literacy.

Furthermore, she said a major problem financial institutions face is the fact that new digital technologies are changing the value proposition of financial products and services in the financial services industry.

“The innovation of traditional financial products by Fintech is changing customer expectations and also creating opportunities in underserved markets and the sector most affected by this is retail banking”, she noted.

Also read: Access Bank Plc holds signing ceremony for N15 Billion green bond issuance

According to the Nigeria FinTech survey 2017 by PWC, banks rank loss of market share and increased pressure on margins as the biggest Fintech threats.

She explained further that, to foster economic development the focus should be on the youths given the demography of Nigeria with a youthful population.

Therefore, due to the inclination of millennials for technology, speed and convenience, innovative strategies need to be adopted to educate them in the most affordable way.

Speaking about her platform, the Tech World of finance, which she calls the uber of finance, millennials can become financially literate in a convenient and affordable way and have access to a bouquet of financial products to choose from.

“Furthermore, financial institutions and fintech companies will be able to create awareness for their financial products that target the retail market and up and coming personal finance coaches will have a platform to improve their skills and experienced finance professionals will be able to showcase their content and reach a global audience.

“Features on the platform include online courses such as the Wealth Creation online course, debt-free online course, among others. For the wealth creation online course, we have partnered with PiggyVest and one of the banks, where anyone who would like to access the course would have to, first of all, start their journey to financial freedom by opening a savings account with PiggyVest or Access Bank Plc with as little as N5,000, she added.

Joshua Chibueze, Co-founder of Piggyvest said, it is digital savings and investment platforms where they help young people save and invests.

Chinonye Udechukwu of Access Bank Plc said, “One of the aims of the bank is to provide financial services by making people and especially Women aware of how to save, how to manage their finance and how to make their finance work for them.

“The partnership will enable Access bank to reach more Women and people, thereby closing the financial inclusion gap”, she said.

On her part, Olufunmbi Coker of the Women Banking team- the W Community of Access Bank Plc also said, the bank is passionate about encouraging people to save and going digital is the way forward.

Vanguard