Report: How financial inclusion-related deposits hit 114.6m in 2016

The new Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) report has showed that there was an estimated 114.6 million financial inclusion-related deposit accounts as at December 2016. According to CBN, 109.5 million accounts out of 114.6 million were personal (non-corporate) accounts, while out of the personal 109.5 million accounts, an estimated 97 per cent, 105.7 million accounts, were held with adults.

This was contented in the 2016 Annual Report on National Financial Inclusion Strategy Implementation that was released by the apex bank on Thursday. The report stated that, “Relative to the adult population, this amounted to 108.9 deposit accounts per 100 adults as at December 24, 2016. This was a sharp increase relative to the previous two years, which was largely due to the fact that mobile money accounts had only been captured in 2016.

“However, even when ignoring this statistical artefact and examining deposit accounts at commercial and microfinance banks only, there was an increase in deposit accounts per 100 adults of more than 10 per cent from 79.6 in 2015 to 88.0 in 2016.”

The report disclosed that between 2015 and 2016, there was increase in the number of deposit accounts at commercial banks, which rose from 64.7 million in 2015 to 76.3 million in 2016, while the number of deposit accounts at microfinance banks, on the contrary, declined from 11.3 million in 2015 to 9.1 million in 2016.

The report stated that, “While the increase in the number of deposit accounts was very positive, the level of activity of accounts needs to be considered too, as what financial inclusion really is targeting is not how many people have financial services, but how many people actually use financial services in order to improve their living standards.

“According to EFInA’s Access to Financial Services in Nigeria 2016 Survey, 60 per cent of adult Nigerians who had a bank or mobile money account also made an electronic payment over the last 12 months, while 82 per cent of those who had a bank or mobile money account also saved through a formal financial institution over the last 12 months.”

The report estimated that number of registered mobile money accounts with adults as at December 2016 amounted to 20.3 million.

According to the report, number of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), per 100,000 adults increased marginally from 17.2 in 2015 to 18.0 in 2016, continuing an upward trend since 2010 when the value had amounted to 11.8.

“However, the 2016 actual remained far below the 2016 target of 46.2 ATMs per 100,000 adults. In absolute numbers, there were 17,440 ATMs in 2016 compared to 16,452 ATMs in 2015,” the reported said.

The report explained further that, “Contrary to the increasing trend from 2010 to 2015, the number of Point-of-Sale (PoS) Devices per 100,000 adults went down from 122.4 in 2015 to 116.3 in 2016.

“With close to 113,000 PoS Devices as at 2016, only 22 per cent of the target of 524.1 PoS Devices per 100,000 adults (approximately 509,000 PoS Devices) was achieved. Additionally, NIBSS reported that only about 65 per cent of the deployed and connected PoS terminals had been used for at least one transaction over the last month, indicating that the number of active devices was even lower.”

The number of unique agents registered with CBN’s Agent Banking Database was 18,228 as at December 2016, accounting for 18.8 agents per 100,000 adults.

“This represented 51 per cent of the 2016 target of 37.2 agents per 100,000 adults and approximately 36,100 agents in 50 absolute terms. In addition, mobile money operators reported that only 22 per cent of the agents which they had registered on CBN’s Agent Banking Database had made at least one transaction over the last one month for their organisation, suggesting a high level of inactive 51 agents,” the report added.