Overview
Access Bank PLC executed a ₦365 billion rights issue; one of the largest capital-raising exercises in Nigerian banking history. The process involved thousands of shareholder transactions that were being managed through a paper-based workflow: physical forms, manual data entry, and spreadsheet reconciliation. The scale of the exercise created significant reconciliation risk, and errors at this magnitude could have had regulatory and reputational consequences.
Challenge
The core problem was threefold. First, the manual paper-based process was not designed to handle the transaction volume of a ₦365B exercise. Second, there was no single source of truth; shareholder data lived across multiple spreadsheets maintained by different teams. Third, the Registrar, Finance, and Operations teams had overlapping but uncoordinated roles in the reconciliation process, creating gaps in accountability.
My Approach
I was engaged as the BA lead for the digitisation programme. My first step was a structured process-mapping exercise; I ran facilitated sessions with the Registrar, Finance, and Operations teams to map the complete as-is workflow and identify all handoff points where data could be lost or corrupted.
From the process map, I authored a Functional Requirements Specification (FRS) covering the digital platform: shareholder data ingestion, validation rules, approval workflows, and the reconciliation engine. I worked with the development team during sprint planning to ensure requirements were implementable and testable, and I coordinated UAT with Finance stakeholders before go-live.
- Facilitated cross-functional stakeholder sessions with Finance, Registrar, and Operations
- Documented 12-stage shareholder transaction lifecycle from submission to reconciliation
- Authored FRS covering data validation, approval workflows, and exception handling
- Defined data validation rules covering KYC verification, subscription amount limits, and allotment calculations
- Coordinated UAT and sign-off across three stakeholder groups
- Produced audit trail specifications to satisfy SEC and CBN reporting requirements
Key Deliverables
- As-is process map (12-stage shareholder transaction lifecycle)
- Functional Requirements Specification (FRS)
- Data validation rule catalogue
- UAT test scripts and sign-off documentation
- Audit trail specification for regulatory compliance