Five new banks set to be operational soon, have been issued banking licenses by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). According to Business Day, most of
Five new banks set to be operational soon, have been issued banking licenses by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). According to Business Day, most of the lenders are planning to kick off banking operations in the country before August 2019.
One of the new banks, “Globus”, with headquarters in Victoria Island, is said to be spearheaded by Elias Igbinakenzua, a former Executive Director at Access Bank who later went on to became the CEO of First Aluminium Nigeria Plc. The second bank by the name “Titan” and is said to have secured the services of a former Heritage bank executive director.
Another owner of one of the new banks is said to be Indian, the former owner of Chi Limited who recently sold a majority stake to Coca Cola – and the initial strategy would be to target large Indian and Lebanese clients with investments in Nigeria especially in the manufacturing and other sectors. The other banks remain largely anonymous but would be a mix of micro-finance, Merchant and/or deposit money banks.
It was reported that the apex bank is being driven by the need to attract new investments into the sector and serve the country’s over 50 million unbanked and under-banked people, even as current banks have struggled to grow loan books since an economic slump in 2016 caused bad loans to surge.
The minimum capital requirement for a Regional bank is N10 billion, while for National banks its N25 billion and international Banks N50 billion, according to the Banks and Other Financial Institutions Act (BOFIA). The capital requirement of microfinance banks, which was amended by the CBN in 2018, is N200 million for Unit Microfinance bank, while N1 billion and N5 billion is for a State and National Microfinance bank respectively. For a merchant bank, the minimum paid-up share capital is currently N15 billion.
