One afternoon in February 2026, I went to Ikeja GRA, a highbrow neighbourhood in Lagos, to talk to a new crop of executives at Cowrywise, the wealth management fintech that manages money for over two million Nigerians.
Four weeks earlier, at a January retreat held at a business club in Victoria Island, a highbrow area on the southern side of Lagos, Cowrywise had promoted 11 people to the title of associate vice president (AVP), the type of move that earns the rare tag of ‘unprecedented’ in Nigeria’s tech ecosystem.
For a company of fewer than 80 people, it meant one in seven employees ended that day as a senior executive.
My visit to Cowrywise’s office was to figure out whether this was a genuine restructuring of a growing financial institution or inflated titles meant to appease employees. What I found was more complex than either explanation.
The Scale of Systemic Risk
When a fintech has 10 users, risk is negligible. When it has 2 million, the complexity is systemic. Drag the slider to see why an 80-person company requires 11 Vice Presidents to survive.
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