The Zoom chime sounds and the face of Titilayo Deborah Olorunyomi fills the screen, framed by dashboards, financial reports, and a quiet Toronto morning. She greets us warmly, with the clarity of someone who has spent years at the intersection of technology and finance. “The world is not only adopting digital tools,” she says, “we are beginning to redefine how finance and technology shape growth together.” From the very first exchange, it is clear that this will not be an abstract seminar. It will be a living conversation about the future of financial management in banking.
We begin by asking how she became a leading voice in technology financial management at the exact moment the continent needed it. She smiles. “Because finance is where technology succeeds or fails. Without a clear financial framework, cloud adoption becomes chaos. With it, banks can innovate, scale, and still deliver returns.” She references her widely cited work on cloud cost management and Technology Business Management frameworks, where she helps banks turn technology budgets into strategic levers. Optimizing, in her language, does not mean reckless cuts. It means aligning budgets, forecasts, usage, and outcomes so that technology serves both customers and shareholders.
I ask her what a modern financial framework looks like inside a boardroom. She paints the picture with calm authority. There must be cost transparency, where every digital product is mapped to its true unit economics, whether per transaction, per customer, or per workload. Budgets should flex with consumption, not remain static on fragile spreadsheets. Forecasts should be informed by real-time data. Governance routines should bring CIOs and CFOs to the same table, speaking a shared language of value, not just expense. Boards must rehearse scenarios before shocks arrive.
“When a bank can say with evidence: here is the cost to serve digitally, here is the margin impact, and here is how AI improves efficiency,” she explains, “then finance is no longer a brake. It becomes a steering wheel.”
The conversation turns naturally to technology. Her voice sharpens with conviction. “Artificial intelligence is reshaping finance itself. It is moving us from rear-view reporting to predictive steering.” She describes AI-driven forecasting platforms that process transaction streams, macro signals, and behavioral data, giving finance teams early warning of liquidity stress, cloud overruns, or emerging profit pools. “AI does not replace a CFO’s judgment,” she insists. “It sharpens it—by getting the right signal to the right decision maker at the right time.”
A reader had written to ask whether these tools are only for the continent’s largest institutions. She shakes her head immediately. “Cloud economics is the great equalizer. Smaller banks do not need to build massive systems in-house. They can adopt cloud-based FinOps and TBM platforms, partner with fintech, connect through APIs, and scale as needed.” The most important first step, she adds, is visibility. “You cannot optimize what you cannot see.”
We ask her what the most pressing financial challenge is for UK institutions. She does not hesitate. “Efficiency in technology spending. Banks are under pressure to deliver more services digitally, but if you cannot measure unit costs, you are subsidizing inefficiency.” She adds that AI-enabled financial controls are rising fast on the agenda. “Fraud, cloud wastage, and operational leakage are no longer side issues. Finance teams must collaborate with data scientists. Spreadsheets alone cannot keep pace.”
She offers a metaphor that resonates with the newsroom. “Financial management is not a brake. It is a steering wheel. With it, banks can grow sustainably, absorb shocks, and invest in the future.” She outlines three pillars that bring this to life: portfolio costing that links IT spend directly to business value, transparent budgets that business leaders actually understand, and scenario-based planning where boards rehearse shocks before they happen.
For all the emphasis on models and dashboards, she insists that culture is decisive. “Finance should not be seen as punishment. Show technology teams the true cost of workloads and show them how optimization funds innovation. When finance is seen as empowerment, the culture shifts.” She describes governance committees where finance, technology, and product leaders collaborate in early design stages. “When finance is at the table from the start, it becomes a partner in innovation, not a late-stage veto.”
Because many of our readers are students, we ask what advice she would give to young professionals. She answers with a trio of skills: learn the language of finance—budgeting, forecasting, and management accounting; learn the language of technology—cloud, data, and automation; and learn the language of ethics—because every financial model affects people. “If you speak those three languages,” she says, “you will always be at the most important tables.”
We mention that her frameworks are already being used from Lagos to Nairobi to Harare to the UK and are now appearing in training curricula and policy workshops. She redirects praise toward collaborators. “Ideas only matter when they become practice. Progress belongs to those who implement—cleaning data, running pilots, and building habits. That’s where the real transformation lies.”
The chat fills with reader questions about fraud and efficiency. She offers examples from recent pilots: cloud anomaly detection where systems flag workloads overspending against benchmarks, AI forecasting that predicts when transaction volumes will outpace infrastructure budgets, and financial forensics where machine learning identifies unusual patterns in device fingerprints and locations. In each case, finance teams act faster and with greater clarity. “Clarity shortens the distance between data and action,” she explains.
We ask what metrics boards should track to know whether their financial systems are effective. She lists a clear set. Unit cost trends, forecast accuracy, cloud spend efficiency, automation ROI, and time-to-report. “These are not just numbers,” she explains. “They are stories about whether finance is enabling growth or simply reporting history.”
Another reader asks about data privacy. She treats the question with seriousness. “Financial systems run on trust. If we use alternative data to expand access, it must be with explicit consent, strong safeguards, and transparency. Innovation will only be accepted when people see clearly what is collected, why it is collected, and how it is protected.”
We pose a scenario that keeps executives awake: a sudden macro shock forces banks to cut costs rapidly. How should finance leaders act? She is pragmatic. Be early and clear with counterparties. Show restructuring options with data. Call customers before they call you. Equip staff to have candid, dignified conversations. “In tough quarters, the human quality of finance becomes visible,” she says. “People remember how you communicated.”
As the call draws to a close, we ask about the next wave of tools. She points to simulation and generative AI. “Finance teams will soon rehearse crises in simulation rooms, with treasury, product, and technology leaders seeing the same synthetic data streams. Practice does not guarantee victory, but it improves the odds. In complex systems, rehearsal is a form of insurance.”
The newsroom falls quiet as we close our notes. What remains is a sense of clarity. Olorunyomi does not offer miracles. She offers a framework where responsibility and innovation reinforce each other. She believes that banks that treat financial management as strategy will outlast shocks. She believes that technology, used with transparency and ethics, can widen inclusion while shrinking waste. She believes that the UK can design for the present, not patch the past, and that its institutions can be both safe and ambitious.
If there is a single sentence that captures her message, it is the one she repeats often: “Financial management is not a brake, it is a steering wheel. With it, banks can scale technology confidently, include more customers fairly, and grow with resilience.”
