Credit penetration in Nigeria has risen to 14 per cent, driven largely by the activities of CRC Credit Bureau Limited, Nigeria’s foremost credit bureau company.
Despite the increased penetration, the level is still lower globally than expected.
The Group Managing Director/CEO of CRC Credit Bureau Limited, Tunde Popoola, disclosed this during the Company’s CRC Finance and Credit Conference 2024, in Lagos on Wednesday.
He added that Nigeria had achieved a significant improvement in credit penetration in the last 15 years of its existence.
The theme of the event which also doubled the company’s 15th anniversary was titled ‘Sustainable Financing Options: Innovations in Credit Risk Management’.
Popoola added that only 33 million Nigerians had their credit scores on the database of CRC Credit Bureau Limited, noting that a whole lot of effort is needed to bring onboard more Nigerians to access credit.
“33 million Nigerians have credit scores. 29.4 million searches were conducted in 2023. More than 10 million searches have been conducted in Q1, 2024. CRC has moved from one product in 2010 to 18, cutting across all value chains of lending,” he noted.
Popoola also revealed that CRC Bureau Limited and the various regulators in the country, especially the Central Bank of Nigeria, despite the daunting challenges to easing access to credit, were making some reasonable progress.
He said, “Today so many millions of Nigerians get loans on their phones and lenders rely on CRC to lend. The Credit Reporting Act signed in 2017 by the Buhari regime to back credit reporting and the backing of the CBN have boosted credit penetration over the years.”
