With 45% of Nigerian adults still unbanked, the NDIC’s financial inclusion mandate extends beyond insurance to encompass awareness, trust-building, and advocacy for formal banking products.
The Nigerian government’s aspiration of achieving 95% financial inclusion by 2024 remains an ambition rather than a reality. The latest data from EFInA’s Access to Finance survey puts formal financial services usage among Nigerian adults at 56%, leaving approximately 45 million adults outside the banking system entirely. For the NDIC, financial exclusion directly limits the effectiveness of the deposit insurance system.
An insured deposit is only valuable if the depositor has a bank account. And awareness of deposit insurance is only meaningful to someone who has chosen to engage with the formal banking system.
The Trust Deficit
Research conducted by the NDIC’s inclusion policy team found that the single most common reason cited by unbanked adults for avoiding the banking system was not cost, distance, or documentation requirements — it was a lack of trust that their money would be safe. This finding points directly to deposit insurance awareness as a tool for driving inclusion.
Agent Banking and Deposit Insurance
The rapid growth of agent banking offers a promising vehicle for both inclusion and deposit insurance awareness. The NDIC is developing a brief training module for bank agents covering the basics of deposit insurance, to be incorporated into the CBN’s agent onboarding programme from 2025.