Nigerian banks are increasing their acquisition of pension firms to expand from banking to the provision of wealth management and other services, thus taping the large assets of about N15 trillion, currently under the management of Nigeria’s pension industry.

This was disclosed by Razaq Ahmed, the co-founder and CEO of fintech startup Cowrywise, who spoke during Nairametrics’ Corporate Deals book webinar on Saturday.

He noted that with the growth of the industry, assets under management are expected to rise to N20 trillion by the end of the year.

Reason for the acquisition: He added that the wave of acquisitions we saw last year points to the strategic intents of the banks. Citing the acquisition of sigma pensions by Access Holdings, he added:

“We also had one handled by GTB, which is the acquisition of Investment 1 pensions, which were formerly subsidiaries of GTB.

“If you look at these 2 major transactions, they point to the fact that Banks are trying to build Financial conglomerates, they are trying to expand from banking to provision of wealth management services, including zenith bank which would incorporate a Holding Company structure.

“It makes strategic sense, Banking is second to telecoms in Nigeria in terms of the user base, at least, we can say the banking sector has about 50 million unique users, which gives them 50 million users to sell products, which is outside the millions of unbanked, so there is a huge opportunity to offer services.”

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