A trust gap could unravel Nigeria's financial inclusion wins

For over a decade, innovation was hailed as the panacea for financial inclusion in Nigeria. A complex network of payment systems, biometric identity verification, and a licensing regime for fintech entities, payment service banks, and mobile money operators were developed. As deputy governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the author played a part in shaping this architecture.

While access to the financial system expanded, its usage stagnated. Currently, the system comprises multiple institutions, but from the customer's viewpoint, it presents as a singular entity. When issues arise, responsibility becomes fragmented, and no single entity is held accountable for the customer's experience. This discrepancy between system construction and customer experience is where trust is gradually eroded, and it becomes evident in the statistics.

As of March 2025, more than 33 million bank accounts in Nigeria were inactive, a significant increase from under 20 million a year prior. This surge is partly due to the Central Bank's initiative to tie accounts to verified identity numbers, leading to account closures and reclassifications instead of genuine disengagement. However, disregarding regulatory impacts, the overall trend still indicates that the number of inactive accounts is on the rise, not decreasing.

Each inactive account symbolizes a data point that the financial system records, only to be lost. In a way, the success of making people enter the financial system is now being used against it. Inactivity is not merely a lack of action but signifies participation that failed to become routine, despite innovation and substantial investments.

This should serve as a warning. Over one in five unbanked adults in developing countries across the globe state in the World Bank's Global Findex Survey that they avoid the financial system due to a lack of trust in financial institutions. Trust does not vanish abruptly. It diminishes through everyday encounters: unsuccessful transactions, unresolved grievances, fraud, and ambiguity about who is responsible when things go wrong.

This fragmentation of responsibility also presents a supervisory oversight issue: regulations still view numerous separate entities rather than a unified system. Regulators may deem every institution sound but might not comprehend whether the system itself inspires confidence. Risk has migrated into the spaces between institutions.

Supervision has primarily remained within these entities. Nigeria's Payments System Vision 2028 acknowledges that trust requires more emphasis in policy. However, the initial step is recognizing that confidence is just as essential to financial inclusion as access once was. Inactive accounts do not directly measure trust; they signify something equally crucial: the moment when participation surrenders to routine.

This figure is something regulators can act upon and indicates where the next phase of reforms should begin - not with a new product or rail, but with someone held accountable for the customer's experience across the entire system, not confined to any single institution. Access brought Nigeria this far. Confidence will determine whether it persists.