The group CEO of Guaranty Trust Holding Company, Segun Agbaje, has been named the winner of the ‘2025 Banking Pioneer Award’.

The event was organised by CWG Plc. The CWG chairman, Phillip Obioha, in a statement on Monday, noted that the Texcellence Awards was established to recognise leaders and institutions that are actively shaping Africa’s digital competitiveness.

He said these leaders were doing this through deliberate infrastructure development, innovation, and cross-sector collaboration.

Mr Obioha noted that the awards spotlighted organisations and executives whose work strengthens the foundational systems that enable secure platforms, scalable enterprise, financial inclusion, and national productivity.

He highlighted the criteria for selecting the ‘Banking Pioneer Award’.

“The Banking Pioneer Award celebrates a visionary leader, founder, or architect of a banking institution who has fundamentally reshaped Nigeria’s financial services landscape and elevated Africa’s position in global banking.

“This award recognises individuals who possess the courage to imagine a different future for banking and the tenacity to bring that vision to life against all odds.

“They built institutions that became synonymous with excellence, innovation, and trust. They took Nigerian banking from the back offices of analogue processing to the fingertips of a digital generation,” Mr Obioha said.

Speaking about the winner, the awards organisers noted that Mr Agbaje, for about three decades, had been the architect of one of African banking’s most remarkable success stories.

Mr Obioha said, “When he (Mr Agbaje) joined GTBank in 1991, Nigerian banking was defined by teller queues and paper ledgers. He envisioned a technology-led institution that could compete with the best in the world and then built it.

“Under his leadership, GTBank pioneered and popularised the USSD banking revolution in Nigeria with the *737# short code, bringing financial services to millions who had never entered a bank branch and catalyzing a financial inclusion movement that transformed the industry.

“Agbaje established GTBank as Africa’s undisputed digital banking pioneer, launching the continent’s first biometric mobile banking app, GTWorld, and earning recognition twice as Africa’s Most Innovative Bank by EMEA Finance Magazine.”

(NAN)