After the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) paused new account openings in April, Kuda Bank, Moniepoint, OPay, and Palmpay have been on a hiring spree, poaching fraud monitoring and compliance analysts from banks and rivals to beef up their compliance and fraud teams.
Moniepoint has expanded its transaction monitoring team by five and hired at least a dozen compliance employees since May. They also poached two seasoned pros from OPay and another from Flutterwave.
OPay also grew its legal team, and Palmpay welcomed six compliance staff, including a senior manager with over a decade at Union Bank. Kuda has onboarded three compliance analysts and a manager from the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement Scheme (NIBSS).
These hirings mark a shift from the industry’s previous stance, where compliance was often seen as a pesky hurdle to rapid growth. Before the ban, fintechs chased swift customer acquisition, sometimes at the expense of stringent Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.
But with the CBN’s crackdown, which came with a stern warning about KYC measures, the fintechs have hired at least thirty compliance staff between them to increase how they monitor transactions and manage customers.
“The central bank wants fintechs to be more compliant, and they need more hands to make that happen,” someone familiar with the hiring patterns of the fintechs told .
It’s not just about appeasing regulators; investors are also keen on ensuring their crown jewels are not wading into murky regulatory waters.
Will this compliance overdrive be enough to reduce fraud and appease regulators? Only time—and perhaps a few more hires—will tell. For now, compliance officers are the new must-have employees in Nigeria’s fintech industry.
