Aquila Core Banking
Lead Product Designer
6 Months
10-person Cross-functional Team
Web Application (Staff/Admin)
Live Product
One platform for complex banking operations
Aquila is a core banking platform for microfinance institutions, bringing customer management, lending, deposits, accounting, approvals and reporting into one operational system.
I led the product design across these interconnected workflows, translating banking requirements, user roles and system constraints into experiences staff could understand and use consistently.
Today, Aquila is used by ~5 microfinance banks across Nigeria and Ghana and supports billions of naira in customer loan disbursements each month.
Designing for institutions of different sizes
Aquila needed to work for both simpler institutions and organisations operating across multiple branches. Rather than exposing every capability to everyone, I designed the experience so functionality and information could adapt to each institution's structure and operational needs.
Modular by design
Institutions can use the banking capabilities relevant to their operations without making the core experience unnecessarily complex.
Built for multi-branch operations
When an institution operates multiple branches, Aquila introduces the additional segmentation, comparison and oversight needed to understand performance across them.
Designing the right experience for every role
Different banking roles needed access to the same platform without seeing the same information or actions. I designed Aquila around shared interaction patterns while adapting permissions, data and available actions to each user's responsibilities.
Super User
Institution-wide access to configure branches, manage permissions and oversee financial operations.
Senior Branch Manager
Branch-level visibility into performance, operations and loan approvals within their assigned scope.
Financial Analyst
Reporting and portfolio insights for monitoring financial performance across the institution.
Accounts Officer
Focused access to deposits, withdrawals and day-to-day transaction processing.
Making financial performance easier to understand
Banking teams needed to understand performance across loans, deposits, clients and branches without piecing information together from different parts of the system. I brought these views into structured reporting experiences designed around the decisions each role needed to make.
A dashboard that adapts to context
A single dashboard couldn't serve every institution and user equally well. I designed the experience so the information, controls and level of detail could adapt to role and institutional structure while keeping the underlying interface consistent.
Making loan creation easier to complete — and harder to get wrong
Loan configuration changes dynamically based on product type, repayment rules, collateral requirements and disbursement method, while keeping the overall workflow consistent.
One framework for different savings products
The same product framework adapts to different deposit models, exposing only the rules and calculations relevant to each product.
Designing safeguards into critical financial workflows
In banking, simplifying a workflow couldn't mean removing the controls that protect the institution. I designed critical actions around permissions, approval thresholds and clear system states so staff could move efficiently while higher-risk activity received the right level of oversight.
Approval Hierarchies
Higher-risk loans and transactions move through additional approval levels based on institutional rules and user authority.
Audit Traceability
Critical actions retain a clear history so institutions can understand what happened, when it happened and who was responsible.
Controlled Fund Movement
Inter-branch transfers and other sensitive movements follow defined permissions and controls while maintaining institution-wide visibility.
Portfolio Monitoring
Loan performance can be reviewed across branches and portfolios to surface repayment behaviour and areas requiring attention.
Impact & Outcomes
Aquila moved beyond concept and prototype into a live core-banking platform used in day-to-day financial operations.
The platform is currently used by ~5 microfinance banks across Nigeria and Ghana, supporting billions of naira in customer loan disbursements each month.
~5
Microfinance banks using Aquila.
2
Countries — Nigeria & Ghana.
₦Billions
Customer loan disbursements supported monthly.
Live
Core banking product in active use.
