Hit by the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pestilence amid other economic shocks, Nigerian banks closed 234 branches and 649 Automated Teller Machines, (ATMs), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revealed.
The global lender, which made the disclosure in its Financial Access Survey 2021 Trends and Developments, explained that the mass shut down of bank branches led to a decline in Nigeria’s Financial Access Score (FAS) to 4.44 in the year against 4.78 recorded in 2019. The report highlighted that the international community uses two FAS indicators to monitor the Target 8.10 of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seeks to fortify domestic financial institutions capacity to widen access to banking and financial services.
The two FAS indicators are the number of commercial bank branches per 100,000 Adults and number of ATMs per 100,000 adults. The report, thus, indicated that Nigeria recorded declines in the two critical FAS indicators and 12 other indicators among the 64 indicators measured by the FAS.
By inference, the number of commercial bank branches in Nigeria dropped to 5,158 in 2020 from 5,392 in 2019. Consequently, the number of commercial bank branches per 1,000 km2 in Nigeria fell to 5.94 in 2020 from 5.68 in 2019. Similarly, in terms of Number of ATMs per 100,000 Adults, the country’s Financial Access score fell to 17.19 in 2020 from 16.14 in 2020. The reduction, according to the IMF, reduced the number of ATMs in Nigeria by 649 to 18,810 in 2020 from 19,459 in 2019. Also, the number of ATMs per 1,000 km2 in Nigeria fell to 20.65 in 2020 from 21.36 in 2019.
The IMF report also showed a sharp decline in the number of registered mobile money agent outlets in Nigeria to 129,154 in 2020 from 145,800 in 2019, representing 11 per cent decline. The survey showed that the number of borrowers from commercial banks decreased to 29.61 per 1,000 adults in 2020 from 25.42 per 1,000 adults in 2019.
However, the outstanding deposits with commercial banks per percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) rose to 20.50 in 2020 against 16.31 in 2019. Outstanding loans from the deposit money banks increased to 12.93 percentage of GDP in 2020 from 11.80 in 2019. The IMF said the 2021 FAS round offers a glimpse of what has happened during the pandemic on the financial access front.
On financial access during the pandemic, the IMF said aggregated FAS data from the 2021 round do not show major disruptions in the access to and use of financial services at commercial banks even though country-level data reveal some varying outcomes.
Source: https://www.sunnewsonline.com/nigerian-banks-closed-234-branches-649-atms-in-2020-says-imf/
