If you need an urgent loan in Nigeria now, all you have to do is get out your mobile phone and search and you would be inundated with offers, but this wasn’t always the case back in the day.
When mobile phones were introduced to Nigeria one of the feelings it brought beyond the improvement in connectivity, was a feeling of inclusion in the global economy. Despite the high costs of SIMs and handsets (my first SIM in 2001 was N25,000, while calls were priced at N50 per minute), it meant that I could now easily reach my cousins wherever in the world they were, a much more accessible way of communicating than the legacy telephone network.
Fast forward 20 years later, mobile phones have gone from novel to ubiquitous, and have helped propel the drive for cashless payments, I hardly go out with much cash these days, perhaps most importantly for the millions of Nigerians like me struggling to improve their lives, is the access to financial services that are available to them.
One thing I read recently was that in 2020, The Central Bank of Nigeria presented a strategic road map and framework for improving financial inclusion in Nigeria.
These initiatives include:
• Development of varied financial products;
• Enhancement of payment processes;
• Development of credit system; and
• Encouragement of a savings culture
This makes more sense to me now, because I have observed a push by microfinance institutions to help provide funding either for personal or business needs. The microfinance model focuses primarily on the provision of financial services to low-income earners, and it has been identified as a viable instrument for promoting financial inclusion so it is perfectly suited for people looking to grow their SME.
There is evidence to show this is working already, consider is that in 2020, about 56 million (56%) Nigerian adults were unbanked, and as of 2018, Enhancing Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA) put this figure at 60 million, this showed that in 2 years about 4 million Nigerians were able to get access to financial services.
Here is where having a mobile phone has revolutionised financial inclusion; according to Statista, Nigeria as of August 2021, 48% of the Nigerian population was using a mobile device to access the internet. This number was expected to rise to 59% by 2026.
A key driver of this growth is the ever-increasing availability of mobile phones to low-income earners and services by financial institutions especially microfinance designed for these low-income earners.
The Letshego group for example, in markets where it has presence, has created tailor-made services like SME loans that serve people who before now could not access such services. What these services all have in common is that they are modelled to ensure that low-income earners are not exempted from enjoying these services.
For example, all from my phone I have used a USSD code *5104# to apply for loans by simply following the prompts, and when I went online from the phone, I could simply browse through the various loan options available making it much easier to get urgent loans than the old days of visiting the bank and filling innumerable forms.
So if it is an urgent loan you need, then the power is already in your hands, whether it is a quick USSD code you want to enter, or scrolling through the various product offers, the choice is all yours.
what ussd code is for quick loan assessment for sme businesses.