Nigeria has exceeded the formal financial inclusion target set under its National Financial Inclusion Strategy (NFIS), but the gains in access have yet to translate into comparable improvements in financial resilience, according to the latest national survey.
Formal financial inclusion reached 73% of Nigerian adults in 2026, up from 64% in 2023 and 56% in 2020, taking the country above the NFIS target of 70%. Yet only 30.7% of formally included adults are classified as financially healthy, leaving an estimated 60.4 million people financially vulnerable or merely coping with their financial circumstances.
The findings are contained in the 2026 Access to Financial Services in Nigeria (A2F) Survey conducted by Enhancing Financial Innovation & Access (EFInA) and weighted by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
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The survey covered 18,679 adults across Nigeria’s 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, representing 98% of the targeted 18,950 interviews. Household listing and data collection took place between April and June 2026.
The findings point to a widening distinction between having access to a formal financial service and being in a position to use that service to withstand financial shocks, accumulate assets or improve economic prospects.
Overall financial inclusion, which incorporates both formal and informal access, rose to 79% in 2026 from 74% in 2023 and 68% in 2020. That represents approximately 94.2 million adults. Formal inclusion alone covers about 87.2 million adults. Digital financial services have been an important driver of that expansion, with usage rising from 45% of adults in 2023 to 64.4% in 2026, equivalent to roughly 77 million people.
But the rapid expansion of accounts, payments and digital services has produced a much smaller improvement in financial security.
Only about one-quarter of Nigerian adults overall are financially healthy, compared with the 73% who are formally included. EFInA describes the resulting 48-percentage-point difference as an “access-health gap.” The gap becomes more apparent when financial resilience is tested directly. Only 10.6% of formally included adults can raise N156,000 within seven days without difficulty, compared with just 3.7% among adults who are not formally included.
The implication is that Nigeria has become substantially better at connecting people to the financial system than at ensuring they have enough income, savings, insurance or affordable credit to use that system effectively.
EFInA characterizes the danger as “participation without progress.”
Credit Is Increasingly Being Used To Cope, Rather Than Produce
The changing purpose of borrowing provides perhaps the clearest indication of the problem. Formal credit use increased to about 10% of adults, or 11.9 million people, from 6% in 2023. But the composition of that borrowing shifted away from productive economic activity.
The proportion of formal borrowers using credit for coping or consumption rose from 31.7% in 2023 to 40.8% in 2026. At the same time, productive enterprise borrowing fell from 40.2% to 34.3%, while borrowing for household assets declined from 25.2% to 23.4%.
The shift marks a significant reversal. In 2023, productive enterprise borrowing exceeded coping and consumption borrowing by 8.5 percentage points. By 2026, coping and consumption had moved 6.5 percentage points ahead of productive enterprise borrowing, a swing of roughly 15 percentage points.
That matters because higher credit penetration does not necessarily mean greater economic opportunity. If households increasingly borrow to meet immediate consumption needs rather than finance businesses, equipment or income-generating activities, expanding credit can become a mechanism for managing financial stress rather than escaping it.
The pattern is, however, deemed vital for Nigeria’s large informal economy. Formal credit use among informally employed Nigerians increased from 5% to 15%, while usage among adults aged 18 to 35 doubled from 4% to 10%. Yet the ability to service that borrowing remains under pressure. About 45.8% of formal-credit users reported some or serious repayment stress, while 83.8% experienced ongoing financial stress.
The wider lending environment has also tightened. Recent industry data cited by Nairametrics showed consumer credit outstanding falling 19.89% to N3.78 trillion in 2025, its first decline in six years, driven largely by weaker personal lending. Consumer credit subsequently fell to N3.03 trillion in February 2026, while retail loans declined 42% and the average maximum lending rate stood at 35.17%.
This creates a difficult environment for the financial inclusion agenda. Banks and digital lenders can extend access, but expensive credit can leave financially fragile households worse off if borrowing is primarily being used to bridge income shortfalls.
The shift toward more selective digital lending is thus considered significant. Lenders are now favoring borrowers with verifiable income, established credit histories, and more predictable cash flows rather than relying on unsecured instant loans. The challenge is to ensure that greater financial access produces more productive borrowing, rather than simply creating additional channels through which households can finance short-term needs.
Geography, Gender and Insurance Expose The Limits Of Access
The gains have also been unevenly distributed.
The urban-rural gap in formal financial inclusion widened from 24 percentage points to 27 percentage points. Formal inclusion reached 85% among urban adults but only 58% in rural areas.
Regional disparities are even sharper. Formal inclusion stood at 96.4% in the South West, compared with 61.4% in the North East and 62.7% in the North West.
Digital financial services show a similar divide. Usage reached 78% of urban adults but only 47% of rural adults. The gender gap also persists, with digital financial services used by 70.5% of men compared with 58% of women.
These differences matter because digital finance is increasingly becoming the main route through which people access formal financial services. If rural and lower-income Nigerians remain less connected to digital payments and financial platforms, headline inclusion numbers can conceal significant differences in the quality and usefulness of access.
Insurance and pensions remain even further behind banking and payments. Formal insurance penetration stood at just 5.2%, equivalent to about 6.2 million adults, while pension participation covered approximately 9% of adults.
About 93% of formally included adults, or roughly 81 million people, remain uninsured. Among those who are insured, however, 59.9% are classified as financially healthy, suggesting that insurance can form part of a broader resilience mechanism rather than simply another measure of financial access.
Trust is also closely connected to continued participation. Some 96.9% of consumers who trusted their financial provider had used its services within the previous 90 days, compared with 65.6% among consumers who distrusted their provider.
Together, they put the quality of financial services at the center of the next phase of inclusion. Fraud prevention, service reliability, transparent pricing, data protection and effective complaint resolution are not peripheral issues. They can determine whether people continue using formal financial products or retreat to informal alternatives.
Therefore, Nigeria’s 2026 results present a more complicated picture than the headline 73% inclusion figure suggests. The country has crossed its formal-access target, and digital finance has expanded rapidly, but the financial system has not yet produced comparable gains in resilience.
Against that backdrop, analysts predict that the next stage of the inclusion agenda will be harder to measure and harder to achieve. This is because it will require moving beyond the number of adults with accounts or access to payment services toward whether households can withstand financial shocks, obtain affordable productive credit, insure against risks, and build assets.