…As ACAEBIN urge internal auditors to strengthen cyber defences

By Providence Ayanfeoluwa

The Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, United Bank for Africa, UBA Plc Mr Oliver Alawuba, has called on internal auditors across the banking industry to embrace artificial intelligence, AI as the sector navigates a rapidly changing digital landscape.

This is even as the Association of Chief Audit Executives of Banks in Nigeria, ACAEBIN’s Chairperson, Mrs. Aina Amah, said that banks must constantly review and strengthen their security perimeters as cybercrime remains one of the biggest threats facing the banking industry, with criminals continuously finding new ways to bypass security controls and exploit vulnerabilities in financial institutions.

The calls were made during ACAEBIN, a community of professionals dedicated to strengthening governance, risk management, internal controls, and organizational resilience within Nigeria’s banking industry’s 64th Quarterly General Meeting, QGMs held in Lagos with the theme: “Internal Audit Function in the AI Era”.

Speaking in a keynote, Alawuba who was represented by Executive Director, Finance & Risk Management, Ugo Nwaghodoh, said AI is already transforming banking operations, from fraud detection and risk assessment to customer service and transaction monitoring.

He explained that while technology presents significant opportunities for efficiency and innovation, it also introduces new risks that require stronger governance, oversight, and assurance mechanisms.

He said: “For us, technology is not replacing the auditor. It is strengthening the auditor. It is enabling audit teams to spend less time on manual extraction and more time on judgment, interpretation, challenge, and insight. It is helping the function move from retrospective review to forward-looking assurance.

“The Al era will not wait for us to be ready. It is already here. The institutions that will lead are those that act now: building capacity, strengthening controls, modernising assurance, protecting customers, and embedding trust into every layer of digital transformation”, he said.

Earlier in her welcome remark, Amah explained that the ACAEBIN QGMs continue to provide a valuable platform for knowledge sharing, peer engagement, professional development, and collective reflection on emerging risks and opportunities shaping our profession.

She said that financial institutions must go beyond conventional security measures by investing in stronger cybersecurity capabilities and engaging experts who can think like cyber criminals in order to identify weaknesses before they are exploited.

She said attacks may not be completely eliminated, but proactive controls can significantly reduce the success rate and impact of cyber threats, emphasizing on the importance of collaboration among banks, saying “institutions can learn valuable lessons from incidents experienced by others rather than waiting to become victims themselves.

She called for greater cooperation between banks and law enforcement agencies, saying that information sharing across the industry, combined with effective law enforcement action, would strengthen the collective resilience of the banking sector against increasingly sophisticated digital threats.

She said: “The role of internal auditors must evolve from merely identifying problems after they occur to preventing them before they happen.”