Nova Merchant Bank plans medium, long term loan for 3 sectors

Nova Merchant Bank Limited has disclosed plans to create medium to long term loan for three sectors of the economy with growth opportunities. The sectors include agriculture, telecoms and healthcare.

The tenor of the loan will range between three and five years, Anya Duroha, managing director said during a virtual meeting on Monday.

The bank last month made market debut with N10 billion bond issue, which was oversubscribed by 300 percent.

Duroha explained that the bank planned to raise N10 billion but realised over N31 billion. The bond issuance is aimed at putting the business on firm footing to achieve its short-term and long-term goals.

“As part of Nova’s strategy, we knew that as a merchant bank with an objective to do developmental financing, we needed to get long term funds to fund long term assets. That was why we went to the capital market to raise funds to finance long term loans for our customers,” he said.

The technology-driven financial institution actively weathered the storm brought by Covid-19 pandemic leveraging technology.

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The presence of the Covid-19 virus has continued to change the traditional ways of performing transactions, and even the financial institutions are not left behind in the sweeping changes.

He said every bank or financial institution needs to be very creative about the products that they sell and how they offer these services in the market.

Duroha said in the last three years the bank has done very well, with earnings growing from about N1.2 billion in 2017 to about N5.8billion in 2019, with profitability also on the upswing.

“We understand that what differentiates a bank from the other is the way they offer their services, and that’s why we are deliberate about the things we want to do, and we actively think through them” the CEO noted.

“For Nova Merchant Bank, we are looking at where we have core competence which hovers around advisory services, asset management, and security business.

According to the managing director, although there are myriad of challenges for merchant banks in Nigeria which includes size and active servicing of clients, it is however encouraging to see banks like Nova Merchant Bank thinking long term and positively changing the narrative when it comes merchant banking in Nigeria.

Hope Moses-Ashike

Hope Moses-Ashike is an Associate Editor, Banking and Finance, with more than a decade of experience reporting on Nigeria’s financial system and broader economy. She closely tracks market movements, monetary policy decisions, company disclosures, regulatory actions, economic indicators, and global developments, and interprets what they mean for businesses, investors, policymakers, and households. Her reporting helps readers understand complex issues such as inflation trends, foreign exchange market dynamics, interest rate decisions, bank performance, and investment risks. She also covers major international events and periodically travels to Washington, D.C., to report on the World Bank/IMF Spring and Annual Meetings. Her dedication to financial journalism has earned her multiple recognitions and invitations to high-level professional development programmes. She is an alumna of the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) in the United States and holds an Advanced Financial Journalism Certificate from the Press Association Training in London, UK. Her other notable achievements include completing the Lagos Business School CMC Programme, the Bloomberg Media Africa Initiative Programme, and a Master Class in Journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa.