The Nigerian Fintech Regulatory Commission (NFRC) Bill 2025 is currently advancing through the National Assembly, promising to establish a single authority to licence and supervise all fintech operators, to simplify oversight. As this new reform unfolds, fintech executives will make decisions within their companies to ensure they are compliant with regulators. When fintechs grow, they often add layers of software systems for different functions. Such as one system for handling customer payments, another for KYC (Know Your Customer) data, or a completely separate system for managing loan applications.
The challenge occurs when these different systems become outdated, or were purchased from different vendors, and cannot communicate simply or automatically with each other, requiring manual interventions. So, they become ‘islands’ of data.
In the CBN’s Open Banking compliance manual and the proposed NFRC guidelines, the mandate is clear: all participants must ensure their solutions are interoperable, auditable, and adhere to strict industry standards. This is the direct opposite of fragmented, siloed systems. With this in mind, no one wants to be caught unprepared as the regulatory landscape evolves.
This is where a unified core banking strategy becomes critical: ensuring data remains unified, and the database acts as ‘one single source of truth for customer data.’ Oradian, a core banking platform for high-growth markets, helps with this by removing the need for manual system reconciliation, guaranteeing the accuracy and consistency of data across all financial products.
Antonio Separovic, CEO and Co-Founder of Oradian, says, “[A] unified oversight raises the bar on data quality and connectivity. Teams that fix their data path and standardise APIs will move fastest and stay safest.”
How Oradian is positioning fintechs for compliance
1. Interoperability & open banking
Unification usually accelerates the standardisation of APIs, data formats, and onboarding to national rails. This means that as regulators increase their expectations for data governance, auditability, and ecosystem connectivity, the success of any scaling fintech hinges on unifying its core technology.
Modern architectures that are API-first by design, like Oradian, help institutions integrate cleanly with national payment rails and KYC/AML services to capture open-banking opportunities efficiently. By providing a single source of truth, Oradian allows institutions to rapidly pilot new compliant products in weeks, achieving speed to market without compromising necessary control or local data residency standards.
2. Data foundations & secure access
Strong oversight of fintech’s data needs clean, well-governed, real-time data, and this is impossible without a single source of truth. Separovic says, “Open-banking style interoperability is only useful if your core can expose clean, governed data on demand. That’s the gap we close.” Technology that offers governed read replicas, role-based controls, and comprehensive query auditing, such as Oradian’s Database Access capability, becomes an essential enabler in this environment. These tools also automate regulatory proof, allowing institutions to rapidly pilot new compliant products in weeks and achieve speed to market without ever compromising the necessary control.
3. Compliance operations by design
Ideally, compliance should be an automated function rather than a reactive burden. Fintech executives should not have to scrabble to update their systems following every regulatory circular or new NFRC directive.
Systems that include integrated audit trails, granular permissions, mandatory maker-checker workflows, and instant template reports, which are key features of the Oradian platform, enable teams to execute and prove compliance activities swiftly.
4. Speed with control
In a newly standardised market, the first movers who can deploy compliant fintech products rapidly will capture market share. This requires an infrastructure that empowers institutions to pilot entirely new products in only a few weeks. Cloud-native architectures, like Oradian’s, provide the agility needed for thorough testing of features and regulatory updates without impacting live customer data, while ensuring massive scalability.
Ultimately, this approach delivers high product velocity and market responsiveness without ever compromising the regulatory control or reliability required by the Central Bank of Nigeria, or the future NFRC.
5. Local readiness & experience
Navigating complex regulatory environments requires partners with a deep regional footprint. Oradian, for instance, operates across Sub-Saharan Africa, including Nigeria, supporting lenders at scale such as FairMoney and SEAP. This commitment is rooted in proven local success and active support for scale lenders in Nigeria. Deep, on-the-ground knowledge of local integration patterns guarantees alignment with Nigeria’s critical data residency mandates and stringent operational needs. Make the right decision for your banking systems today, and stay one step ahead of the curve with Oradian.
To book a consultation about keeping your systems compliant and unified with regulatory frameworks, head over to oradian.com.
