BY Ezinne Chima
Findings from the 2014 survey by the Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA) to financial services in Nigeria have shown that 36.9 million adults in the country are un-banked.
The survey indicated that 39.5 per cent of the country’s population have no access to financial services.
The report also showed that the number of adults nationwide who are banked increased from 28.6 million (32.5 per cent of the adult population) in 2012 to 33.9 million (36.3 per cent of the adult population) in 2014.
EFInA, a financial sector development organisation that promotes financial inclusion, is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Modupe Ladipo, chief executive officer of EFInA, said that since her organisation started measuring financial access in 2008, the number of Nigerian adults with access to formal financial services (such as bank accounts, insurance, pensions, mobile money or microfinance bank products) has increased by 25 million.
“However, given Nigeria’s population growth, the number of financially excluded adults still remains high,” she said.
“To reduce financial exclusion, financial services providers will need to be more effective in reaching those in the most excluded groups, including youth, women, Northern Nigerians, and those living in rural areas.”
The nationally-representative EFInA Access to Financial Services in Nigeria 2014 survey also showed that mobile money awareness and usage remains low.
It stated that 11.9 million adults (12.7 per cent of the adult population) are aware of mobile money, and only 800,000 Nigerian adults (0.8 per cent of the adult population) currently use mobile money.
Uptake of insurance in the country was also low, with one million adults (1.1 per cent of the adult population) using insurance.
It indicated that 14.3 million adults said that they would be interested in micro-insurance products. The survey also found that 2.6 million adults (2.8 per cent of the adult population) currently have a micro-finance bank account; however an additional 31.5 million adults said that they would like to have a microfinance bank account.
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