Revenue growth, pan-African expansion and advancing Africa’s sports and creative industries helped the 2025 AFIS Awards winners stand out to a cross-sector jury of their peers.
Jury members included senior bank executives, insurance regulators, journalists and industry consultants.
Among them were Soha El-Turky, Deputy CEO & Executive Board Member of the National Bank of Egypt (African Banker award); Namakau Mundia Ntini, CEO of Zambia’s Pensions and Insurance Authority (African Insurer award) and Paul Derreumaux, Honorary Chairman of Bank of Africa (Central Bank Governor award).
The 2025 winners were:
African Banker – Mohamed El Kettani, CEO, Attijariwafa Bank
Mohamed El Kettani, CEO of Morocco-headquartered Attijariwafa Bank since 2007, received the African Banker Award.
His group has been positioning itself as a financial “tech company” and an “AI bank”.
As well as using AI for credit decisions, the group has rolled out AI systems that transcribe and analyse customer requests, scoring sentiment and urgency and automatically directing cases to the most competent department.
“AI is no longer a tool; it has become a true engine of transformation,” said the bank in its awards application.
The bank operates in 27 countries, with recent expansion in West Africa and Egypt, supported by hubs in Paris and Dubai.
That footprint helped deliver year-on-year growth: net banking income rose 15% in 2024 to MAD 34.5 billion ($3.3 bn), while consolidated net profit increased 29% to MAD 11.7 billion ($1.1 bn), driven by higher loan volumes and deposits.
Attijariwafa was also at the centre of one of the region’s major sovereign deals. In November 2024, it arranged Gabon’s $290 million early buyback of nearly half of its 2025 Eurobond. The deal refinanced external dollar debt into CFA-franc paper issued locally.
African Banker – Jury
African Insurer – Hernie Werth, CEO, SanlamAllianz
The African Insurer award went to Hernie Werth, CEO of SanlamAllianz.
The group – formed via a 2023 joint venture between Sanlam and Allianz – grew revenue 26% outside of South Africa in 2024 and has achieved a 16% market share on the continent.
The merger – completed in at least nine of the 27 countries where Sanlam and/or Allianz are present – helped new business volumes in life insurance grow 24% in 2024, and net earned premiums in general insurance rise by 11%.
Delphine Traoré, head of General Insurance at SanlamAllianz, said on the sidelines of AFIS last year: “In large markets, if we don’t have a leadership position, it would be important for us to see if we can achieve organic growth or if we need to acquire. Both options are on the table.”
African Insurer – Jury
African Fund – Helios Investment Partners
Helios Investment Partners picked up African Fund of the Year.
After leading an investment consortium to support the 2021 formation of NBA Africa, Helios Sports & Entertainment Group (HSEG) this year launched a $75m fund focused on sports and creative industries.
The group’s Helios Fund V (2025) – targeting 10 -12 investments of $70m-$80m in companies specialised in digital infrastructure, financial services and tech-enabled education, training and health – also raised $183 million in its first close.
Helios continues to actively seek $400 million extra for the fund.
African Fund – Jury
African Disrupter – HUB2
Ivorian firm HUB2, established in 2019, picked up the Disrupter of the Year Award. The payments firm raised $8.5m and reached 4 million end users in in 2024, most of whom were previously excluded from traditional banking
The company, operating in seven West African countries, consolidates Africa’s fragmented payment infrastructure into a single API allowing domestic and cross-border transactions across platforms. This for instance allows payments from a neobank to be interoperable with mobile money.
The company has its sights on being operational in 12 French-speaking West and Central African countries by the end of the year. HUB2 is then targeting expansion to anglophone countries – namely Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania – by 2028 before looking to full Africa coverage by 2030 via Egypt and South Africa.
The group is planning a Series B in 2027 to fund expansion. Its target is to exceed €200M in revenue and 20m end-users by 2030.
African Disrupter – Jury
African Woman In Finance – Chilufya Mutale-Mwila, Co-Founder & COO, eShandi
The cofounder and COO of eShandi, a Pan-African challenger bank operating across Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and South Africa was named African Woman in Finance of the Year.
Her firm aims to build Africa’s first borderless digital bank.
Through data-led decision making she maintained the neobank’s non-performing loan ratio below 5% – the average NPL ratio is around 16% in Kenya and CEMAC, and 9% in WAEMU by comparison.
The company distributed $10m in working capital loans for 1.5m customers with women accounting for 50% of eShandi’s loan portfolio. The neobank has partnered with telco giants including MTN and Airtel to offer loan access via USSD, without the need for internet access.
African Woman In Finance – Jury
African Central Bank Governor – Abdellatif Jouahri, Governor, Bank Al-Maghrib
Morocco’s central bank governor Abdellatif Jouahri saw off competition from the governors of South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt to claim African Central Bank Governor of the Year.
The jury hailed the governor for unpegging the Moroccan dirham to the Euro and US dollar, and for helping to curtail inflation.
Morocco’s annual inflation rate fell to 0.1% in October this year, the lowest rate since March 2021, according to Trading Economics.
The awards jury said that theBank Al-Maghrib governor had steered Morocco towards some of the highest financial inclusion rates across Africa and is known for constant dialogue with his counterparts in West & Central Africa, making cross-border compliance easier for Moroccan banks.
African Central Bank Governor – Jury
