More Nigerians are connected to financial services. The next challenge is to turn those relationships into stronger livelihoods, protection and financial security.
Consider Rofiat, a 43-year-old single mother raising four children and running a small business. She has had a bank account for more than 20 years. It helps her receive payments, move money and keep savings. But when school fees fall due or an unexpected health expense arises, she draws down those savings and borrows from informal providers. Repeatedly, money needed to restock her business goes towards meeting family obligations. She gets through the immediate pressure, then faces the task of rebuilding the resources that sustain her income.
This is the account of a survey respondent. It brings into focus a distinction at the heart of EFInA’s Access to Financial Services in Nigeria (A2F) 2026 Survey: being connected to finance does not necessarily mean being financially secure.
Three in four Nigerian adults are not financially healthy. Almost half are financially coping, while a further quarter are financially vulnerable. Even among banked adults, 65% remain vulnerable or coping.
These findings sit alongside substantial progress. Formal financial inclusion increased from 64% in 2023 to 73% in 2026, while financial exclusion declined from 26% to 21%. More Nigerians are using financial services to receive income, make payments, save and pursue their goals. Those gains expand the infrastructure through which households and businesses can participate in the economy.
The next question is what those financial relationships enable people to achieve.
A2F 2026 shows that Nigerians increasingly combine banks, mobile money, agents and informal mechanisms to manage their finances. Cash remains important, particularly where earnings and local commerce originate in cash. Understanding how these channels work together is essential to designing services that fit people’s lives.
Financial participation is also deepening at different speeds across needs. Payments and savings have expanded, but formal credit reaches only 10% of adults, insurance 5% and pensions 9%. Many people underserved by these services already have financial relationships. The opportunity is to make those relationships useful across a fuller range of household and enterprise needs.
The financial-health findings show why that matters. The proportion of adults classified as financially healthy increased from 16% in 2023 to 25% in 2026. Several dimensions improved, including access to emergency funds, spending, saving and resilience. Yet the context is critical.
Greater ability to mobilise emergency funds coexists with increased debt stress. Improvements in spending sit alongside severe liquidity distress affecting 61% of adults. Among adults who experienced a shock, approximately 72% relied on fragile or erosive coping mechanisms, including borrowing, depending on others, selling assets or cutting expenditure.
These responses can meet an immediate need while creating future obligations or depleting resources. For Rofiat, paying an urgent bill may leave less capital available to earn the next month’s income. Across the survey, the prevalence of costly coping underscores the need to distinguish getting through a shock from absorbing it safely. Longer-term financial planning has also weakened.
Coping with today’s emergency can come at the cost of tomorrow’s resilience.
The unfinished access agenda remains equally important. Around three-quarters of financially excluded adults live in the North West and North East. Poverty, gender and geographic disadvantages overlap, but their effects differ across populations. National progress therefore needs interventions tailored to the constraints particular communities face.
Together, the findings point to six practical priorities:
- Target concentrated exclusion. Connect accessible financial services with identity enrolment, livelihood programmes and social protection, particularly for low-income women in high-exclusion locations.
- Design for the customer’s full financial life. Address everyday money management, productive activity, protection, asset building and retirement. Use open banking and cross-sector partnerships to make existing payment and savings relationships more useful.
- Help informal micro businesses access suitable finance. With customers’ consent, use their transaction records to better understand their current needs, anticipate future needs, and assess what they can afford to borrow. Match repayments to how and when they earn.
- Build protection against shocks. Connect appropriate savings and insurance with livelihoods and public programmes. Households facing acute vulnerability may need social protection rather than additional debt.
- Make financial participation dependable. Improve transaction reliability, transparent pricing, fraud prevention and accessible complaint resolution.
For Rofiat, the future involves more than keeping an account active. Two children are approaching university. She wants to manage her health needs, support ageing parents, own a home and set something aside for her children as they enter an uncertain labour market. Each ambition draws on the same business income.
No single financial product can resolve all these pressures. Earnings, healthcare costs, education expenses and care responsibilities also shape her options. But a financial relationship designed around her life could help her prepare for recurring costs, protect working capital, manage suitable borrowing and build protection against major risks.
Providers do not need to deliver every service themselves. Partnerships can connect customers to appropriate insurance, investment and retirement solutions, while regulators help clarify participation pathways and address barriers across sectors.
Nigeria has built a wider and more diverse financial system. A2F 2026 provides evidence for making it work harder: reaching those still excluded and helping those already connected build assets, finance productive opportunities, withstand shocks and prepare for the future.
Explore the accompanying A2F 2026 slides for the findings and priorities shaping this next phase.
