Intense Group Hosts Digital Growth Summit: Data-Driven Insights for the Future of Non-Banking Finance
Intense Group, one of Africa’s fastest-growing marketing and growth technology companies, reinforced its position at the centre of digital transformation with the successful hosting of the 2025 Digital Growth Summit. In partnership with Leadway Group, the full-day innovation forum brought together leaders across technology, strategy, and financial services to chart a new future for Nigeria’s non-banking financial sector.
For years, Intense Group has built a reputation for merging creativity, data, and technology to help brands scale with precision. The summit represented a natural extension of that mission, providing structure, insight, and a new digital growth playbook to one of the continent’s most important service categories.
The central question driving the summit was clear: How can financial institutions build trust, drive adoption, and compete in a digital-first economy?
Data-Driven Path to Digital Revenue Growth
As Nigerian firms reassess marketing budgets under inflationary pressure, executives emphasised that the only path to measurable returns on digital investment is stricter data discipline and closer collaboration between agencies and corporate teams. Speakers at the summit warned that digital spend often fails because many businesses still cannot accurately track what drives revenue.
Intense Group CEO and Founder, Leye Makanjuola, stressed the importance of financial clarity in digital campaigns:
“The biggest mistake is not being data-focused. You need to know how much it should cost you to acquire a customer and ensure that you’re not spending more than your threshold for customer acquisition.”
Makanjuola added that revenue growth requires transparency between partners, noting that neither agencies nor corporations can deliver meaningful results alone. He further explained that digital’s influence on buying patterns is increasing, even if its current contribution to large organisations’ revenue is relatively small:
“The trend is that in the next few years to a decade, digital will be the way that people make buy decisions and purchase.”
Harnessing Nigeria’s Digital Potential
Harnessing Nigeria’s Digital Potential
The summit highlighted Nigeria’s growing digital opportunity. Senior Client Partner at Aleph, Timilehin Oyedeji, presented demand-side data showing that Nigeria’s rising internet penetration and youth demographics make digital channels critical for customer acquisition:
“Nigeria is a market of over 220 million people, with over 50% internet penetration. Platforms such as TikTok offer about 35% cheaper cost per acquisition.”
Oyedeji argued that firms seeking stronger ROI must invest in signals, automation, and multi-channel touchpoints. He cautioned that brands ignoring data consolidation and personalisation risk losing out as consumers move across multiple digital environments before making purchase decisions.
From Campaigns to Integrated Digital Ecosystems
For Leadway Holdings, improving ROI means unifying its subsidiaries’ digital operations instead of running fragmented campaigns. Head of Digital Business, Diana Mulili, explained that the group is transitioning from traditional advertising to performance-led execution:
“We want to scale our digital business across the group and move from traditional advertising into performance marketing.”
Mulili added that effective returns will come from leveraging the brand equity of Leadway Assurance to drive awareness and conversion across other subsidiaries. The group’s 2026 vision is an integrated digital ecosystem, where customers can transact across products within a single platform, streamlining conversion and improving measurable revenue outcomes.
Measurement, Transparency, and Customer-Centric Design
Speakers emphasised the importance of tracking bottom-funnel marketing activities and aligning internal processes with data-driven decision-making. Misan Arenyeka, Head of Innovation at Intense Group, explained that digital allows Leadway to measure channel effectiveness not just by cost-per-lead, but by cost-per-paying customer:
“The more we’re able to track and measure every single thing that’s happening, then we can achieve those goals that we have.”
Panel discussions and strategic conversations explored key shifts shaping non-banking finance, including Nigeria’s evolving consumer psychology, automation, data transparency, and customer lifecycle design. Trust emerged as a recurring theme, with leaders stressing that financial brands must simplify communication, humanise messaging, and leverage cultural insights to win in a low-trust market.
A Turning Point for Growth
The summit reframed growth in the NBFS category not as a series of isolated campaigns but as an interconnected system powered by insight, automation, and customer-centric design. For Intense Group, the event reinforced its ambition to redefine how brands scale using technology, creativity, and data. For Leadway Group, it marked the beginning of a new chapter, rooted in transparency, trust, and a shared vision for digital excellence.
As Nigeria continues its shift toward a digital financial future, the ideas and strategies launched at the Digital Growth Summit are set to shape how non-banking institutions acquire customers, build loyalty, and compete in an evolving marketplace.
