- International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently published its Financial Access Survey (FAS) 2021.
- The report shows that Nigeria’s FAS score has declined from 4.78 in 2019 to4.44 in 2020.
- The reason behind the drop in score is the closure of 234 branches of Nigerian banks and 649 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in 2020.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently published its Financial Access Survey (FAS) 2021. The report shows that Nigeria’s FAS score has declined from 4.78 in 2019 to4.44 I n 2020. The reason behind the drop in score is the closure of 234 branches of Nigerian banks and 649 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in 2020. These are two major indicators that decide domestic financial institutions’ capacity to promote access to banking and financial services are part of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Financial experts are of the view that the significance of these commonly used FAS indicators has declined with the fast-paced digitisation of financial services, which was further accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore applying the number of physical bank branches as an indicator of progress or otherwise cannot be a deciding factor to rate the performance of Nigeria in meeting SDG target.
They pointed out that the COVID-19 outbreak prompted a massive embrace of e-Payment platforms and digital transformation in Nigeria which is amply reflected in Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBBS) Plc. It shows that the value of Nigeria’s e-payment through ATMs, POS, Mobile, Web, NIP and e-Bills transactions rose by over 85 per cent, from August 2020 to August 2021, to N172 trillion. Between January and August 2020, the figure rose by N93 trillion.
Moreover, the trend is in line with the global trend. In the two developed economies like UK and USA, the number of bank branches and ATMs has been dropping. The number of ATMs in the UK fell by twenty percent between July 2018 and July 2021 while in the US, the number of FDIC-insured bank branches started dropping from 2017 onwards.
