Provide more credit to consumers, Credit Bureaux tell banks

Credit Bureaux have urged banks to lend more money to consumers in order to accelerate the growth of the nations economy The Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Dun and Bradstreet Credit Bureau, Miguel Llenas, made this assertion in Lagos at the CRC Credit Bureau Industry Forum, with the theme Growth and innovation in retail banking: Building sustainable business models. Llenas was quoted in a statement as saying that the country would not develop when banks only lend money to corporate organisations.

He noted that Nigerian banks offered credit facilities mostly to the public sector and a few corporate organisations, which he said constituted only about two per cent of the entire population.

The Managing Director, CRC Credit Bureau Nigeria Limited, Ahmed Popoola, said Africas retail banking revenue had been estimated to grow to $53bn (about N19.08tn) by 2022. He noted that the figure represented 41 per cent of the total banking revenues in the region in the next four years, with Nigeria and South Africa being among the growth drivers.

According to a 2018 African banking report recently released by McKinsey and Company, the expected growth in revenues will come from South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana and Kenya. McKinsey, in its report, noted that Africas banking markets were among the most exciting in the world as the continents overall banking was the second fastest-growing and second most profitable of any global region, and a hotbed of innovation.

(Punch)