If you could analyse almost 20 years of borrowing data and review hundreds of documents to give a comprehensive report on the state of lending in Nigeria, what would the outcome be? You will end up with the Nigerian Credit Landscape Report and its excerpt: the Nigerian Consumer Credit Insight, both by Credit Direct.

This report is a data-driven account of how credit actually moves through this country. Who gets it. What it costs. How it is used. Where it is going.

This is a deep dive into what the numbers say about lending in 2025 and our outlook for the sector in Nigeria.

Why Credit Direct Published This

We are not neutral observers of Nigeria's credit market. We are an active participant, a finance company with nearly two decades of operating history, and a loan book that makes us the largest finance company in the country by assets.

This means we have access to something most analysts and researchers don't: real data from real credit transactions, drawn from a sample of over 300,000 borrowers. It's an insight into how Nigerians borrow, repay, default, and recover, combined with macroeconomic and sector-wide data that provide broader context.

The research and analytics division of Credit Direct Finance Company Limited produced the Nigeria’s Credit Landscape Report. It’s independently written without any editorial influence from Credit Direct’s commercial or credit functions.

Where Credit Direct's own performance data appears — and it does appear, clearly labelled — it is distinguished from external third-party data sourced from the CBN, NBS, FHAN, FMDQ, the World Bank, the IMF, and individual bank and finance company financial statements.

What the Report Actually Covers

The Nigerian Credit Landscape Report 2025 spans 154 pages across eight sections. It is the most comprehensive treatment of Nigeria's credit ecosystem by a private organisation that we are aware of. Here's what it covers;

Macroeconomic and sentiment conditions: This section covers business sentiment, household confidence, PMI trends, exchange rate dynamics, and what each of these means for credit appetite and risk across the system.

System-wide credit and liquidity: This section shows how money is moving through the economy, trends in total credit, Nigeria's credit penetration relative to peer countries, corporate debt market activity, and lending concentration.

Banking sector performance: In this section, we looked at Nigeria's largest lenders. We analysed loan growth, asset quality, lending rates, profitability, capital adequacy, and the competitive dynamics reshaping the relationship between traditional banks and digital lenders.

Consumer credit insights: This section samples Credit Direct's borrower data from 300,000 active customers, covering gender, income, generational patterns, borrowing behaviour, repayment performance, and BNPL-specific trends.

Finance company sector performance: We also analysed the finance company sector (in which Credit Direct operates), considering industry structure, portfolio composition, NPL trends, funding structures, and the top ten finance companies ranked by loan book.

Integrated credit conditions: This section details supply and demand conditions, pricing spreads, default signals, and what the data says about where stress is building in the system.

Market opportunities and vulnerabilities: We also highlighted where the next wave of credit growth is most likely to come from and the structural weaknesses that could constrain it.

Insights on the future of credit in Nigeria: Finally, we shared our forward-looking perspectives on AI and scoring, open banking, informal sector inclusion, diaspora credit, risk-based pricing, and more.

Together, these sections form a picture of Nigeria's credit ecosystem that is both wide enough to be useful to decision-makers and specific enough to be actionable.

Who It Was Built For

The report was designed with five distinct audiences in mind, because the credit conversation in Nigeria needs to happen at multiple levels simultaneously.

Banks and financial institutions will find the sector performance data, competitive benchmarking, and credit conditions assessment most relevant to their strategy and risk management.

Policymakers and regulators will find the credit penetration analysis, structural vulnerability assessment, and public debt sustainability section most useful for understanding where the ecosystem needs intervention.

Investors and development finance institutions will find the market opportunity analysis, lending market concentration data, and future outlook most relevant to capital allocation decisions.

SMEs and corporate treasury teams will find the credit supply and demand conditions, pricing spread analysis, and macroeconomic outlook most directly applicable to their financing decisions.

Informed consumers, professionals, entrepreneurs, and anyone who has ever borrowed money or wondered why credit in Nigeria works the way it does will find the consumer insights section and borrower behaviour data the most accessible and immediately relevant.

A Snippet from The Report.

Only 6% of Nigerian adults borrow from formal sources, despite 64% of the adult population being financially included.

Nearly two-thirds of Nigerian adults have been brought into the financial system, meaning they have bank accounts. Yet only one in seventeen of them has ever accessed formal credit.

At Credit Direct, everything we've built over the past 19 years is designed to improve access to lending for Nigerians of all stripes. From civil servants to market women, our goal has been to ensure true financial inclusion, especially in the credit ecosystem.

What We Hope This Report Does

We are publishing this because the credit conversation in Nigeria deserves better data, more honest analysis, and a clearer picture of what is actually happening beyond the headlines.

This report is intended to inform lending decisions, shape product design, influence policy conversations, and help more Nigerians understand credit as the tool it is, not the burden it has too often been treated as.

If this report makes one policymaker think differently about credit infrastructure, or helps one lender design a more inclusive product, or gives one entrepreneur the data they need to make a sharper financing decision, it has done its job.

Download the full Nigerian Credit Landscape Report 2025 here.