The International Monetary Fund (IMF) team engaged Fintech Nigeria Association (FintechNGR) in a meeting to ensure an effective financial inclusion strategy to help Africa’s largest economy achieve more financial inclusion.
The FintechNGR is among the few selected organizations who met with the IMF mission team in the course of their visit to Nigeria on the 29th of June, 2018.
Amine Mati, IMF senior resident representative in Nigeria at the meeting said, that the IMF team in a bid to facilitate financial growth across board is particularly interested in the state of financial inclusion and fintech in Nigeria
“The IMF is opened to collaborate with the association on its initiatives and would be willing to look at the challenges the sector is facing in financial inclusion drive as well as provide help where necessary” Amine said.
The FintechNGR met with the IMF team between 27-29th of June, 2018 in Lagos to get updates on the Financial Inclusion strategy in the country, among other issues.
Some of the other critical discussion points in with Fintech Nigeria, include; Developments in Financial Access, Constraints to Mobile Money Development, Developments in Microfinance, Doing Business (high financial access rating; regulatory environment) and implications for firms, Investment promotion bill, Update on Financial Inclusion Strategy amongst others.
Participants of the meeting deliberated on a number of issues with a focus on investment in infrastructure with a basic end to end technology, the establishment of incentives for companies investing in the rural unbanked areas, collaboration between financial services providers, regulators and telcos amongst others to ensure the financial growth in the country is achieved
According to Olufemi Awoyemi, member, FintechNGR, ‘’formulation of regulation to drive innovation must be an interplay between the regulators and the key players in the sector to achieve a low level of financial exclusion”.
Meanwhile, The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has plans to include 80 percent of its population by the year 2020.
The Apex bank said it would work aggressively towards increasing financial inclusion rate, by cutting down the number of people excluded from the financial system to 20 per cent in the same period under review.
Although financial analysts rather see the plans as too optimistic and may not be realisable, considering the conventional banking mechanism which Nigeria operates has not been doing justice in including the informal sector.
This also follows the World Bank’s Global Findex Database Report for 2017 which revealed a slump in the level of financial inclusion in the population hub of Africa despite the global rising of financial inclusion as reported by the World Bank. “Financial inclusion is on the rise globally, accelerated by mobile phones and the internet, but gains have been uneven across countries,” the World Bank said in a statement.
As compiled from the World Bank’s Global Findex Database report released in April 2018, Nigerian adults who are 25 years and above with bank accounts declined by 5 percentage points to 44 percent in 2017 as compared to the preceding years’ figures. This was not different with account holders over 15 years of age, as the account was down 4 percentage points from 44 percent in 2014 to 40 percent in 2017.
This brought about 40 percent of the total adults in the country who have bank accounts, with 25 percent gap between the men and women in Africa’s largest economy. With the increasing clamor for financial inclusion, the Apex bank already has in issue, 21 mobile money licensed agents in a bid to achieve her 80 percent financial inclusion goal by 2020. This move is believed to have been informed from the benefits the platform has yielded to her peers in other sub-Saharan African Countries.
