Angola’s fifth-largest bank by assets is doubling down on women-led businesses after slashing interest rates for female entrepreneurs by more than two-thirds. Speaking to AFIS, Banco Millennium Atlântico CEO Isabel Espírito Santo outlines her next steps to scale financial access. She also tackles what a new financial architecture might look like for Angola as the central bank aims to court new international players into the domestic market.

Isabel Espírito Santo took the helm of Banco Millennium Atlântico in 2025, shattering a glass ceiling as the first woman to lead a major Angolan bank. In November, she will join 1,250 financial heavyweights—from central bankers to fintech pioneers—converging in Angola’s capital Luanda for the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS 2026).

Forged from a 2016 merger with Portugal’s Millennium BCP, ATLANTICO is major force in Angola’s private sector banking scene. Driven by a dedicated “Disruption Lab,” the bank has aggressively scaled digital onboarding and mobile banking.

Backed by financial lines from the IFC, Proparco, African Guarantee Fund, and Germany’s second largest bank Commerzbank, Espírito Santo’s outfit is rapidly fuelling local SME lending and trade finance.

AFIS Editorial Team: As AFIS comes to Luanda for the first time, what do you see as the most pressing priorities for Africa’s financial services industry today?

Isabel Espírito Santo: Receiving AFIS in Luanda for the first time and being this the first edition in Southern Africa and in a Lusophone country is genuinely meaningful. We welcome it with honour, but also with a sense of responsibility to make the most of this moment.

If we had to name the priorities, we would say: getting financial inclusion to move at scale, building capital markets with real depth, ensuring digital transformation reaches those who need it most, strengthening the talent base that African finance will depend on, and improving payments integration across the continent.

Africa is not lacking in vision. What it needs is the institutional infrastructure to turn that vision into something durable.

Angola is going through a real economic transformation right now where agriculture, manufacturing, mining, financial services, and major infrastructure like the Lobito Corridor are at the centre of this process. For us, AFIS choosing Luanda is recognition of that trajectory, and we intend to use this platform seriously.

AFIS Editorial Team: With tighter global liquidity, how is your institution adjusting its strategy towards risk and lending in African markets?

Isabel Espírito Santo: Tighter liquidity demands more discipline. But we think the instinct to pull back from lending would be exactly the wrong response for institutions like ours.

What we have done is reinforce our risk frameworks and sharpen our focus on sectors where there is genuine, structural growth potential. We have also leaned more into partnerships with development finance institutions as blended finance allows us to be more active without taking on imprudent exposure.

But we want to be clear: we are not retreating. If anything, this environment makes the case for African-rooted institutions even stronger. No external actor has the contextual knowledge we have built over 20 years in this economy. Our priority is productive sectors like energy, manufacturing, agriculture, SMEs and women-led businesses. And we are expanding our guarantee partnerships to extend credit more widely without compromising quality. The question was never whether to lend. It is how to lend in a way that actually builds something meaningful for Angola and for Angolans.

AFIS Editorial Team: Banco Millennium Atlântico late last year signed an MOU with United Nations Development Program to advance digital financial inclusion – how has that partnership progressed since it was signed in November 2025, and what digital financial inclusion hurdles remain to be tackled in your markets of operation?

Isabel Espírito Santo: The agreement we signed with UNDP set up a cooperation framework across digital financial inclusion, financial literacy, social innovation, and impact investment. It was a significant moment for us, not just institutionally but in terms of what it signals about our commitment to communities beyond the traditional client base.

Since signing, we have moved quickly from framework to concrete initiatives. We are developing joint programmes in training, financial education, and entrepreneurship, and pushing forward digital and proximity solutions, and Agiliza, our USSD and banking agents platform, is central to that. The focus is reaching communities that have historically been outside the formal financial system partially and sometimes entirely.

On the hurdles. At ATLANTICO we have been very intentional and active on the path to financial literacy and inclusion, and we gathered deep knowledge about the opportunities that can be addressed. For example, connectivity in rural areas remains a serious challenge that constrains reliability and expansion of digital services. Roads too. Some communities are very hard to reach. The cost of telecoms is still inaccessible for many people and we embedded these costs on our balance sheet with solutions like AGILIZA that runs on USSD protocols that are completely free for customers or through sponsored data that allows customers to use our ATLANTICO Directo app without consuming mobile data. We also understand that financial and digital literacy levels mean that access alone is not enough; people need to understand and trust what they are accessing. Technology can do a lot, but it cannot substitute for education and for genuine trust-building on the ground. That is where we focus our energy daily.

AFIS Editorial Team: The governor of Banco Nacional de Angola recently told AFIS that he was “committed to creating favourable conditions for the entry of international banks”. How do you feel about potential entry of international banks – what doors could it open for cooperation? How might it intensify competition?

Isabel Espírito Santo: The potential entry of international banks in Angola may be viewed as part of the ongoing development of the country’s financial sector and its increasing integration into regional and global financial networks. In this context, the process could create new avenues for cooperation between domestic and international institutions, fostering exchanges of expertise, strengthening business and investment connections, and supporting greater engagement with international financial markets.

At the same time, the presence of international banks may serve as an indicator of the evolving capacity of the national banking system to operate within a more interconnected environment.

AFIS Editorial Team: Your bank has committed to reducing interest rates for projects led by women from 23% to 7.5% – how has that move announced late last year affected uptake of lending products for women-led ventures? And what are your thoughts on further strengthening financial services beyond lending for women?

Isabel Espírito Santo: This was not a symbolic gesture. When we signed the agreement with FGC – Fundo de Garantia de Crédito in October 2025, cutting rates from 23% to as low as 7.5% for projects led by women or where women are the primary source of labour, we understood it as a structural shift in how we do business. It covers all sectors, with a particular focus on agriculture, fishing, manufacturing, forestry, commerce, and health, and goes up to 200 million kwanzas per operation.

The early signs are encouraging. Women entrepreneurs who were simply priced out of formal credit before are now coming in and having real conversations with our teams about their businesses and their ambitions. The Credit Guarantee Fund covering up to 80% of credit risk has been essential to making that work in practice.

But we are very conscious that credit is only one piece of this. Savings products, insurance, digital payment solutions, business mentoring. If we do not make these accessible and designed around women’s actual realities, we have not done the job. We are trying to build ecosystems, not just credit lines. Women are not a niche segment for us. They are the backbone of Angola’s productive economy, and of Angolan families. ATLANTICO’s ambition is to be the bank that actually reflects and amplifies that.

AFIS Editorial Team: Finally, the AfDB has been pushing for a “New African Financial Architecture.” What does a New African Financial Architecture in Angola look like for you, and how can it be advanced at AFIS this November?

Isabel Espírito Santo: The Abidjan Consensus from April 2026, with its 11-point roadmap for addressing Africa’s $400 billion annual development finance gap, captures something important. We fully support the ambition behind it.

For Angola specifically, what a new architecture means in practice is reducing our dependence on external financing by building real depth in our domestic capital markets: deepening BODIVA, expanding the institutional investor base, creating instruments that actually channel Angolan savings into Angola’s future. The AfDB president said it clearly: Africa is not short of capital. The continent holds around $4 trillion in medium and long-term savings. What is missing is architecture that mobilises those savings efficiently and with African sovereignty genuinely at its centre.

AFIS in Luanda this November will be the right place to push those conversations on domestic capital mobilisation, continental financial integration, digital transformation, and strengthening African institutions. ATLANTICO intends to be an active participant in those discussions. Not as an observer, but as an institution that has been trying to implement, step by step, exactly what NAFAD stands for: inclusion, innovation, and the belief that Africa’s financial future is something we build for ourselves.

Register for AFIS 2026 here.