TechQuest Innovation Award and Hackathon 2023 is set to welcome a new voice on its judging panel, Ms Vivian Osuji, a finance and customer service professional with deep experience in retail and SME banking. Her appointment reflects TechQuest’s commitment to grounding innovation in the realities of everyday users, small business owners, and the financial systems that support them.
As the Hackathon brings together developers, founders, young professionals, and student teams to build practical solutions, the quality of judging becomes as important as the ideas themselves. Judges are expected to look beyond aesthetics and pitch performance, and instead ask hard questions about usability, adoption, financial viability, and long term impact. This is where Vivian’s profile stands out. Her career has been spent close to customers, close to small businesses, and close to the systems that either enable or block progress.
This announcement provides an overview of her professional journey, and shows how her experience aligns directly with three core judging areas for TechQuest 2023: Financial Literacy and Consumer Banking Solutions, SME and Microbusiness Support Innovation, and Customer Experience and Service Delivery Improvement.
A banking career built around real people and real businesses
Vivian’s path into finance began with a solid grounding in marketing from Imo State University. Rather than moving into abstract strategy roles, she built her career in Nigeria’s banking sector from the front line up. That decision shaped the type of professional she has become. Her daily work has involved listening to customers, interpreting their needs, and converting bank processes into clear, usable actions.
In her early years in retail banking, she took on front line responsibilities that demanded both discipline and empathy. Customers did not arrive with textbook cases. They came with questions about salary accounts, informal savings habits, family commitments, small business ideas, and the fear of making the wrong financial decision. Vivian learned to respond with clarity. She translated banking language into simple explanations that individuals could act on.
Her years as a Personal Banking Officer deepened this capability. The role required her to open and manage accounts for individuals, guide them through basic financial decisions, and support loan requests where appropriate. It was not just about pushing products. She built a reputation for explaining the implications of each choice in terms that customers could understand. This made it easier for them to trust the institution and to take responsible steps in managing their funds.
Beyond routine transactions, Vivian treated each interaction as an opportunity to strengthen financial habits. When a client came in to open a salary account, she would also talk through savings patterns. When someone requested a loan, she would discuss repayment discipline and how the facility fit into their wider plans. This habit of combining service with education is a core thread in her career and a strong foundation for her new role as a judge.
Her transition into the MSME space as an Account Officer expanded her perspective. Here, she worked directly with micro, small, and medium scale businesses that needed more than basic account support. These clients were trying to stabilise cash flow, secure loans, manage staff payments, and keep records that could stand up to scrutiny. Vivian supported them through loan documentation, ensuring that records were accurate, complete, and aligned with policy requirements.
She responded quickly to operational issues, from payment delays to account queries, and became a practical problem solver for entrepreneurs who often lacked the time to navigate complex processes. In many cases, her careful attention to detail helped secure high value accounts and deepen relationships with business owners. She did not only respond to existing needs. She also played a part in new business growth by identifying promising entrepreneurs, recommending relevant banking services, and ensuring they received reliable, timely support.
Across these roles, Vivian has developed strong competency in communication, documentation, basic financial analysis, and customer relationship management. She has learned to coordinate with internal teams, maintain organised records in busy environments, and remain a steady point of contact for individuals and businesses. These are not abstract skills. They are the daily capabilities that determine whether financial services feel accessible and useful, or distant and confusing.
Why she fits the TechQuest 2023 judging mandate
For TechQuest, the value of a judge lies in the lens they bring to evaluating solutions. Vivian’s lens is shaped by years of work at the intersection of financial services, small business realities, and customer expectations. This makes her particularly suited to three judging areas that are central to the 2023 edition.
1. Financial Literacy and Consumer Banking Solutions
Vivian’s retail banking experience positions her to evaluate solutions that aim to improve financial literacy and access for individuals. She has firsthand knowledge of the points where customers get stuck. She has seen people hesitate over opening accounts, misunderstand loan terms, or overlook simple tools that could help them manage their money better.
In the Hackathon context, many teams will propose apps, platforms, or tools that promise to make banking simpler. Vivian is well placed to test those claims. She can ask whether an interface truly reduces confusion or merely rearranges it. She can examine whether a feature actually supports better financial habits, such as consistent savings or prudent borrowing, rather than just adding more notifications.
Because she has spent years explaining banking products in clear language, she can quickly spot whether a solution is designed around the user’s point of view or the institution’s convenience. Projects that say they are “inclusive” must prove it under her scrutiny. Are the steps simple enough for a first time account holder who is not tech savvy. Does the tool guide users through basic decisions like which account type to choose, how to track spending, or how to set up a realistic repayment plan.
Her experience supporting customers through account opening, fund management, and everyday decisions means she can distinguish between ideas that sound appealing and those that would actually help people manage their money better. That practical filter is essential for a category focused on financial literacy and consumer banking solutions.
2. SME and Microbusiness Support Innovation
In the MSME segment, Vivian has worked closely with entrepreneurs who are building and sustaining micro and small enterprises in a demanding operating environment. She understands the documentation required to unlock credit. She has seen where records typically fall short and how that affects access to funding. She knows that many business owners are running their operations with limited tools, relying on manual records, fragmented systems, or personal memory.
As a judge in the SME and Microbusiness Support Innovation category, she can bring that insight into the evaluation room. When teams present solutions that promise easier access to credit, she can interrogate how those tools collect and validate data, how they present information to financial institutions, and whether they truly reduce friction for both sides. She can assess whether the proposed system makes it easier for small businesses to stay organised, track cash flow, and present themselves credibly when seeking loans.
Her background in managing business accounts and resolving operational issues also equips her to judge solutions focused on customer management for small businesses. She knows how missed information, delayed communication, or poor documentation can damage a client relationship. As a result, she can identify digital tools that help entrepreneurs track customer interactions, follow up consistently, and keep accurate records without adding unnecessary complexity.
Vivian’s experience in contributing to new business growth, identifying promising entrepreneurs, and promoting relevant banking services also gives her a good feel for scalability. She can ask whether a proposed solution is practical for a small business with limited staff, or whether it assumes capacities that simply do not exist on the ground. This ability to test feasibility against real conditions is central to the kind of innovation TechQuest seeks to encourage.
3. Customer Experience and Service Delivery Improvement
Customer experience is more than friendly interactions. It is the total system through which a service is delivered, from the first enquiry to issue resolution. Vivian has operated in that system for years. In front line banking roles, she has dealt with queues, incomplete forms, delayed responses, and the pressure of customers who need quick answers. In the MSME segment, she has handled urgent operational requests that, if ignored, could disrupt business activities.
This practical exposure equips her to judge projects that claim to improve customer experience and service delivery. She can look at a digital solution and ask whether it truly shortens the path from problem to resolution. She will check if it reduces duplication in requests, clarifies steps for the user, and integrates properly with back office processes. If a product promises instant support, she will consider what that means for documentation, approvals, and follow up.
Because she has worked closely with both internal teams and external clients, she understands that communication has to work in both directions. Service providers must have systems that allow staff to act quickly, and users must receive information that is accurate and timely. Vivian can therefore assess whether a project strengthens communication across channels, reduces friction for both staff and customers, and offers practical tools that make everyday transactions smoother and more reliable.
In this judging area, her strength lies in her ability to connect technology features to operational realities. She can see where a good idea might fail if it does not align with real workflows, and where a seemingly simple feature could have a positive impact at scale.
Contribution to the TechQuest ecosystem
Bringing Vivian onto the TechQuest 2023 judging panel is not only about filling a seat. It is about anchoring the evaluation process in grounded, everyday financial and service experience. The Innovation Award and Hackathon attract a wide range of participants, from students testing their first prototypes to experienced founders refining new products. Many of their ideas touch finance, business management, and customer interaction, whether or not those are the headline themes.
Judges like Vivian help raise the standard by insisting that solutions work for real users. Her questions will focus on clarity, practicality, and the ability of a project to serve individuals and small businesses that may not have sophisticated tools or advanced financial knowledge. She can help the panel differentiate between innovation that is impressive on presentation day and innovation that can be adopted and sustained in the real economy.
Her presence also signals to participants that TechQuest values solutions that include underserved segments, such as micro enterprises and first time account holders. She understands their context and can identify solutions that respect their constraints while giving them a path to growth. For founders building in financial literacy, SME support, and customer experience, this is an important signal. Their work will be evaluated by someone who has spent years dealing with the challenges they are trying to solve.
Looking ahead to TechQuest 2023 and beyond
As TechQuest Innovation Award and Hackathon 2023 progresses, the combination of strong ideas and rigorous judging will determine the quality of projects that emerge. The appointment of Ms Vivian Osuji to the judging panel strengthens that process. Her background in retail and SME banking, her hands on experience with individuals and microbusinesses, and her practical understanding of customer experience give her a clear lens through which to evaluate technology and innovation.
For innovators, founders, students, and professionals considering participation, this should be a signal of seriousness. TechQuest is building an ecosystem where solutions are not only creative, but credible. Projects will be examined by judges who understand how finance, service delivery, and business growth play out in the real world.
Future editions of the TechQuest Innovation Award and Hackathon will continue to rely on judges with this kind of grounded expertise. Participants can step forward knowing that their work will be reviewed thoughtfully, tested against real conditions, and measured for both innovation and practical impact. With judges like Vivian on the panel, TechQuest 2023 reinforces its position as a focused and credible platform for building the next generation of solutions in finance, SME support, and customer experience.
