For Nigeria’s Financial Services Industry to enter the next growth phase, there needs to be a revolution in the Insurance, Asset Management and Fintech space, akin to the Banking sector consolidation to make them abler to play a bigger role in the economy.
This is according to Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, former CEO of Access Bank, during a press briefing ahead of the launch of his memoir: Leaving the Tarmac: Buying a Bank in Africa, which will be released globally on Monday 29th of March.
“Nigerian insurance Companies are not big enough, Asset Management firms are too small and Fintechs as well. That is the problem of financial intermediation in Nigeria today, not necessarily the banks,” Aigboje said at the briefing attended by MoneyCentral.
“Let the banks continue to do what they do and let’s have the revolution in these other places.”
Globally Insurance companies and Asset managers are the largest financial intermediaries in an economy according to Aig-Imoukhuede.
An example is Cathie Wood and her ARK investment portfolio.
The 65-year-old investor who is known for her prescient and profitable bets on disruptive industries like electric vehicles, DNA sequencing, biotechnology, genetic editing and new battery technologies, posted a blowout year in 2020, with her Innovation Fund up 152 percent.
Investors flocked to invest billions into ARK’s ETF, pushing the firm’s assets to as much as $60 billion.
Asset managers are where wealth is created and the future is preserved, according to Aig-Imoukhuede.
“Africa is lagging behind in Asset Mangement and Insurance with perhaps the exception of South Africa. We need to fix that or remain left behind,” Aig-Imoukhuede said.