• Thursday, March 28, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

EFInA builds capacity of financial services stakeholders on Agent Networks deployment

Efina
The more people are included, the more they have access to financial services that will ultimately improve their leaving conditions and gradually get out of poverty.
Achieving universal access to formal financial services requires pervasive and sustainable Agent Networks across nation. Many studies have revealed the importance of Agent Networks in driving access to financial services, especially at the last mile.
Nigeria currently has about 22 Deposit Money Banks, over 800 Microfinance Banks, 25 Mobile Money Operators, yet, 36.6 million adults (36.8% of the total adult population) remain financially excluded.
The National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS) identified Agent Networks as one of the important channels required to achieve the Financial Inclusion target. Going by the shift from physical bank branches to branchless banking globally, the revised NFIS strategy considers increasing the Agent target from 62 to 476 Agents per 100,000 adults by 2020.
As such, there is a need to build the capacity of the stakeholders to achieve this target. It is estimated that at least 500,000 Agents should be available to serve about 105 million adult population in Nigeria by the year 2020.
In pursuit of EFInA’s goal to provide capacity building for financial services stakeholders to drive the increased deployment of pervasive agent networks across Nigeria, and at the end grow Financial Inclusion Agenda, EFInA hosted a two-day intensive training for financial services providers on “Essentials for Deploying Sustainable Agent Networks in Nigeria”.
Participants were senior executives from deposit money banks, microfinance banks, mobile money operators, Super Agents, telcos, Fintechs and regulators. The main objective of the training is to create a platform for key financial services stakeholders to understand in practical terms how to drive the increase of widespread and sustainable agent networks across Nigeria.