Making Prosperity Common: How Rank Is Rebuilding Financial Access Through Trust and Community

Across Africa, millions of individuals and small businesses remain financially “locked out” - excluded not because they lack discipline or ambition, but because traditional systems fail to reflect how money actually moves in their lives. From rigid credit requirements to products designed without context, access to finance often stops where real life begins.

Rank is building a different kind of financial system - one grounded in trust, community, and lived realities. With a mission to make prosperity common, the company is reimagining financial access by designing for inclusion from the ground up, particularly for women and underserved communities.

This month, we spotlight Femi Iromini, Founder of #BackedByVP company - Rank (formerly Moni), whose work sits at the intersection of financial inclusion, community-led design, and long-term commercial resilience. In this conversation, Femi shares how Rank’s mission shapes its culture and products, why trust is foundational to financial inclusion, and what founders must keep in mind when building for impact in emerging markets.

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1. Rank’s mission is to make prosperity common. How does this guiding principle shape your product design and company culture?   

At Rank, making prosperity common is our north star. It’s what guides everything we do - how we design, build, and grow our products. We focus on keeping things simple, clear, and accessible, because too much complexity often keeps the people who need help the most from getting it.

This mission shapes how we work every day. We build with empathy, really trying to understand the lives of the people we serve, and we hold ourselves accountable for making a real difference. Every choice we make is about long-term impact, not quick wins, so that as we grow, our users grow too.

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2. The “All-Seats-At-The-Table Award” recognizes your efforts in Diversity & Inclusion. What does inclusion mean for Rank beyond internal representation, and how are you making access tangible for the financially “locked-out”? 

For Rank, inclusion is not just about who sits in the room; it’s about who the system is built for.

Over 80% of the businesses we’ve supported are women-led. That is not by accident. We’ve seen that when women gain access to capital and financial tools, the impact travels beyond the individual. It reaches families, households, and entire communities. Supporting women creates a multiplier effect for access.

In our decision-making, women’s voices are taken seriously because women are often the most practical stewards of money. They understand sustainability, long-term planning, and shared responsibility. Their input directly shapes how we design products, assess risk, and define success.

For the financially “locked-out,” access becomes tangible when systems recognize real-life behavior, not just traditional credentials. By intentionally empowering women and the businesses they run, we are unlocking financial participation for many who would otherwise be excluded.

We believe that when you empower a woman, you empower a nation. And by empowering women, we accelerate our mission to make prosperity common.

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3. How do community dynamics inform your approach to financial inclusion, and why is trust a core ingredient in your model? 

Community sits at the heart of how we work because money is shaped by real life and shared experiences, not theory.

We spend a lot of time listening to the people we serve and letting their voices guide how we design products, communicate, and educate. Their realities inform our decisions, not the other way around.

Trust is everything. Many underserved communities have been excluded or burned by financial systems in the past, so trust isn’t assumed, it’s earned. We build it by being transparent, showing up consistently, and making sure our growth is tied to our users actually doing better financially.

When people see that our success moves with theirs, adoption follows naturally.

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4. Unlocking financial access for underserved populations can be challenging. What key lessons have you learned about balancing affordability, scale, and sustainability? 

One thing we’ve learned is that everything becomes easier when you stop thinking only about individuals and start thinking about communities.

A lot of financial products are built for one person at a time, and that can make them expensive to run and hard to scale. When you design for communities, something different happens. Trust spreads faster, people bring each other in, and the cost of serving each customer naturally comes down.

In emerging markets, people already save, borrow, and make decisions together. Community is how money actually moves. Building around those existing habits reduces friction and lowers the cost of delivering financial services.

That approach allows us to keep services affordable, grow responsibly, and still build a business that lasts. It’s less about forcing new behavior and more about supporting what already works.

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5. Looking ahead, what advice would you give to founders who want to build businesses that create measurable social impact while remaining commercially resilient? 

Founders don’t need another borrowed playbook. The real answers are usually much closer to home.

Emerging markets have quietly powered global growth for years, yet they’re often treated like experiments for ideas built somewhere else. That’s a mistake. There’s real strength in looking inward and building for the realities you know first-hand. When you understand how people actually live, earn, spend, and make decisions, you’re already ahead.

Commercial resilience comes from relevance. Products stick when they feel natural, not forced. When your solution fits seamlessly into everyday life, adoption happens more easily, and impact becomes something you can clearly see and measure.

The businesses that truly last are built with communities, not above them. Founders who respect local behaviors, trust systems, and informal networks tend to create solutions that don’t just scale, but genuinely improve lives.

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As Rank continues to build financial systems rooted in trust, community, and lived realities, Femi & his team’s journey offers a clear reminder: lasting prosperity isn’t created by importing models, but by designing with deep empathy for the people they are meant to serve. It’s this commitment to relevance, inclusion, and long-term thinking that will define the next generation of enduring African companies.

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About Femi Iromini

Femi is the Chief Executive Officer of Rank (formerly Moni). Before founding Rank, he worked with the World Bank on Nigeria’s Country Private Sector Diagnostic and founded Lead360, an education company bridging the gap between learning and employment. He also served as COO at Antigravity Inc. and has broad experience across agriculture, education, and fintech.

Femi has advised organizations including AXA Venture Partners and the African Foresight Group, and held roles at Goldman Sachs. He is a faculty member at CcHub, NGHub by Facebook, and Make-IT Accelerator. He is a Y Combinator Fellow, Ashoka Fellow, and Stanford GSB executive education alumnus.

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