Tomi Popoola is at the forefront of fintech-driven financial inclusion. As Founder and CEO of Slash Finances, she's harnessed AI and cloud innovation to bring accessible financial services to underserved communities.

Popoola’s fintech mission is grounded in credibility—from her early career as an AWS Solutions Architect serving Fortune 500 clients, to the recognition she's earned for championing diversity, equity, and inclusion across global tech stages.

In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Popoola explores how AI continues to reshape finance—from fraud prevention and credit scoring to customer experience. She also delves into cloud infrastructure's democratizing power, helping businesses scale, iterate and innovate rapidly without hefty infrastructure costs.

Q1. In your view, how has artificial intelligence transformed the financial sector so far, and where has it had the greatest impact?

Tomi Popoola: "I'll say it's shaped it for the past few decades and it's made huge progress. When you think about artificial intelligence and machine learning at the same time, you see the huge leaps that the financial sector has made and how it's grown.

"Examples could be fraud detection – small businesses are now able to detect fraud a lot earlier, helping both end users and the businesses themselves. Another big thing is access. Previously, without AI and ML, underserved countries didn't have much access to certain financial services. AI has provided access.

"Take credit scoring, for example. Traditionally, it was based on limited data and traditional methods. Now, alternative data sets are being brought in, providing new perspectives and allowing tailored financial decisions.

"Financial decisions and financial services can now be more personalised. Because of this, customer bases are increasing, the financial sector is innovating, and the possibilities are endless.

"So I'd say AI has shaped the industry from where it started, it's shaping it now, and there's still huge growth potential out there. Being able to leverage AI in the perfect way for certain scenarios will definitely help, just as it already has been."

Q2. From a business perspective, what is the smartest way for companies to harness the benefits of AI and drive measurable returns?

Tomi Popoola: "You need to think about your business, and the benefit AI can bring to your business and your end users. If you don't think about it that way, it could be counterintuitive.

"So first: what does your business lack? How can you make it more efficient? Then, how can you turn that efficiency into return customers, customer satisfaction, and improved ROI?

"An example: if you're a B2C business, your customers may have questions or need to speak to agents. You could build a pre-programmed chatbot. That chatbot could have answers to FAQs, common issues, or disputes.

"This helps in two ways: internally, it reduces operational and administrative overhead by cutting the number of cases sent to human agents; externally, it increases customer satisfaction by making the process more efficient. Customers spend less time waiting, disputes are solved faster, and they're more likely to come back and use your service again.

"Another example is personalized experiences and better decision-making in areas like lending. Businesses can use AI to harness data as a form of power – when used correctly, it provides clear benefits both internally and externally."

Q3. The cloud has become the backbone of modern innovation. How do you see it continuing to shape the future of technology and business?

Tomi Popoola: "This is a question I love, because when you think about innovation and creativity, you should think about the cloud more than people usually do.

"Prior to the cloud, businesses relied on on-premises data centres. That made it very hard for small businesses to survive – you needed your servers, your databases, and you had to buy them outright. That was very expensive and created technical debt.

"Now, the cloud has virtualised all of this. You pay for the service as you use it. That allows for quicker innovation and more affordable access. Small businesses can use subscription models to pay for technology. That means quicker learning, quicker innovation, and less risk of technical debt.

"Take generative AI, for example. The cloud has provided the access to scale it. You can build large language models, scale them, and deploy them. This drives growth and market competition. Previously, doing this would have cost so much that small businesses couldn't afford it – even large businesses struggled to justify the cost.

"The cloud has created this concept of "two-way door decisions": you can innovate, and if something doesn't work out, you can step back without losing everything. But if it does work, you can scale it rapidly.

"That scalability is huge. You can serve large numbers of customers and learn new things at the same time. When you think about continuous integration, CI/CD, robotics, containerisation, or even something as basic as creating your own website – so much of this has been made possible in modern times because of the cloud."

This exclusive interview with Tomi Popoola was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.

Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.