Off the back of the recent launch of our Open Banking decision engine, Decide, we sat down with Folake, the Frontend Engineer, to find out more:
Wale Abba: So, Folake firstly tell us a little bit about you and your role at Indicina?
Folake: Hiiii. I’m Folake Tehingbola, graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University and now a FrontEnd Developer here at Indicina. For my role at Indicina, I work with other engineers on one of our core products, which is Originate (both the Merchant and Customer portal), and I was also a part of the team that built this product from ground up 😉, so I’ve been here for a while.
And it’s been an amazing experience so far, building stuff, making mistakes, learning on the job, and working alongside other amazing engineers.
W: Did you know that working in technology was what you wanted to do? How did you decide to go into computer science
F: To be fair, I really didn’t decide, I was just 15 years old, coming out of secondary school and I wasn’t critically thinking of studying computer science or working in Tech at that time. Tech wasn’t really a thing then, it was more important for me to get into the university, I didn’t really care.
Plus my dad was the Technology lead at Leadway at the time, and he studied computer science, so for me, Computer Science was just the next logical course to pick, since I was already in science class at that time.
But so much has changed now, people are more intentional about being in Tech, learning to code or studying Tech related courses, but for me, it was the next and best option available to me, but I’m glad I picked it. I have no regrets at all.
W: We’ve recently launched a decision engine, tell us in your own words what pain points it is solving for credit providers?
F: If you’ve ever had to process a loan, you know just how many documents are involved in the approval process.
It’s a lot. Decide elimates the stress.
Decide is a simple, robust, and easy-to-integrate API-enabled platform that provides insights you need to make better credit decisions in real-time. Decide will automatically analyze any type of bank statement and output over 50 variables that gives you an insight into the applicant’s income, transaction patterns, and spending behaviour.
W: What advice would you give to a woman considering a career in tech industry? What do you wish you had known?
F: Considering a career in Tech? Find a mentor for yourself, I think that’s one easy way to transition into Tech. You can learn from them, learn from their mistakes, and they can hold your hands through the process.
Also, doing a lot of research and reading on your own, asking a lot of questions.
Tech is so wide, you have to find out what exactly you want to do and who exactly you want to be in tech. If not, you’ll find yourself trying out so many things at once and eventually ending up frustrated.
What do I wish I had known earlier? I wish I started earlier. I didn’t start coding until my final year where I had to build a pothole detection system (That was my final year project), So looking back, I wish I started coding way earlier. (I’ll probably be Jeff Bezoz Jnr by now :wink:) But I have no regrets so far.
Thanks so much to Folake for a great interview.
