National Bank of Rwanda and Proto expand AI agents for consumer protection

Proto recently hosted a workshop with the National Bank of Rwanda (BNR) to explore how AI agents can further strengthen financial consumer protection in Rwanda.

Intumwa’s success in Rwanda

Intumwa connects citizens with financial service providers through accessible digital channels, enabling complaints to be submitted, routed, monitored, and resolved more efficiently. Over the past year, the platform has recorded growth in citizen interactions, reduced average complaint-resolution time from approximately 35 days to 4 days, and increased women’s participation from below 10% to approximately 20%.

Building on this progress, the existing Intumwa platform will get voice capabilities to widen the citizen-engagement channels. This could make complaint reporting and follow-up services more accessible to citizens who prefer speaking rather than typing.

Alongside voice, Proto’s Perception module extends that reach into public conversation itself – monitoring social media and other digital sources to surface consumer complaints, emerging fraud risks, and shifts in public sentiment earlier than formal channels alone would allow.

Designing the trust layer

• Voice – a financial education assistant built on BNR-approved content, giving citizens accessible guidance on financial services, consumer rights, digital payments, and fraud prevention.
• Insight Advisor – secure access to Intumwa’s underlying data, giving BNR’s own teams the institutional analysis and decision support to act on what the platform already captures.
• Anti-Scam Utilities – a proof of concept from Proto’s participation in the C:>DIR Global “Agentic Regulator” hackathon, connecting conversational fraud reporting with transaction track-and-trace across Rwanda’s payment ecosystem.

Proto and Financial Network Analytics demonstrated how a citizen’s fraud report could initiate a real-time investigation workflow – tracing the movement of stolen funds, identifying mule accounts, coordinating investigations, and keeping affected consumers informed throughout.

Together, these initiatives point toward a more proactive model of consumer protection: one built on consumer education, accessible reporting, real-time insights, and fraud intelligence, rather than resolution after harm is already done.

Proto looks forward to continuing its collaboration with BNR and supporting the next phase of inclusive financial consumer protection in Rwanda through AI agents.

About Proto

Proto deploys inclusive AI workflows in emerging markets. The company is trusted by governments and enterprises to automate workflows for anti-scam centres, patient experience, and other mission-critical usecases. Proto's clients include central banks, remittance services, and hospitals protected with the company's SOC2, ISO27001, GDPR, and HIPAA compliance. Proto's text and voice AI datasets power high performance for local languages beyond the limits of large language models. Headquartered in Canada, Proto operates from regional offices in the Philippines and Rwanda.