The 2016 National Financial Inclusion Strategy Implementation Report has shown that the country fell below its target for 2016 although there were improvements.
The country is still far from its 2020 target which stakeholders say may not be achieved if drastic steps are not taken.
Access to credit, pensions, insurance and electronic payment and savings fell way below the target set for 2016 according to the report.
The percentage of adult population that has or uses financial products from formal or informal financial institutions stood at 58 per cent, less than the 70 per cent that was projected.
According to the report, the country failed to meet the formal credit penetration of 28.8 per cent, as the percentage of adult population that had borrowed or paid back a loan through a regulated financial institution in 2016 increased marginally from 1.5 per cent in 2014 to 1.8 per cent in 2016, based on estimates from EFInA’s Access to Financial Services.
Also insurance and pension penetrations which increased slightly failed to meet up with the target that had been set.
Insurance penetration increased from 1.1 per cent in 2014 to 1.8 per cent in 2016 which is far below the defined 2016 target of 24.8 per cent, while pension penetration rose slightly to 7.5 per cent in 2015 to 7.9 per cent in 2016.
While the trend was positive, only about one third of the defined 2016 target of a penetration of 25.6 per cent was achieved.
The percentage of the adult population owning a commercial bank account, proxied by the percentage of adults having a Bank Verification Number (BVN), increased from 23.6 per cent in 2015 to 28.0 per cent in 2016.
The achieved value as at 2016 stayed behind the 2016 payments and savings targets of 56.4 and 45.6 per cent, respectively.
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The report also showed that there had been a decline in bank branches Point of Sale distribution per 100,000 individuals had dropped in 2016.
The number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 adults marginally declined from 5.7 in 2015 to 5.6 in 2016, continuing the negative trend since 2010.
The target of 7.5 branches per 100,000 adults, therefore, was missed.
The number of PoS terminals per 100,000 adults accounted for 116.3 in 2016, which represented a decrease from 122.4 PoS terminals per 100,000 adults in 2015.
The 2016 target of 524.1 PoS devices per 100,000 adults was missed.
The number of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) per 100,000 adults, however increased slightly from 17.2 in 2015 to 18.0 in 2016.
However, the achieved value was lower than the target of 46.2 ATMs per 100,000 adults for 2016.
