Nigeria does not have a small business problem. It has a financing problem.
For years, MSMEs have been described as the backbone of the economy—responsible for the majority of employment and a significant share of GDP.
Yet, for the average entrepreneur in a market stall or small workshop, access to capital remains inconsistent, expensive, or outright inaccessible.
Banks say the risks are too high. Digital lenders promise speed but often deliver opacity. Somewhere between both extremes, millions of businesses are left navigating a system that was never designed for them.
This is the gap Seyi Asagun has chosen to work in.
As the Managing Director and CEO of Entourage Integrated Trust Limited, Asagun is not trying to outcompete commercial banks or outpace fintech startups. Instead, his work challenges a more uncomfortable question: What if the problem isn’t access to money—but how the system defines who deserves it?
Over the past decade, Entourage has expanded into 31 states, building a workforce of over 600 and supporting more than 150,000 small businesses. On paper, those numbers reflect growth. In reality, they reflect something more fundamental—a deliberate attempt to rebuild trust in a system where trust has been eroded.
Because that is where Nigeria’s microfinance sector has struggled the most.
In recent years, the rise of “faceless” digital lending platforms has introduced speed into the system, but often at a cost. Reports of aggressive recovery tactics, hidden charges, and reputational harassment have become difficult to ignore. What was meant to democratize access to credit has, in some cases, deepened distrust.
Asagun has been one of the more vocal critics of this trend.
His approach—what he describes as “smarter finance”—runs counter to the prevailing model. It is slower, more structured, and deliberately human. Entourage’s hybrid lending system pairs digital infrastructure with field officers who operate within the communities they serve.
To some, this may seem inefficient. To others, it is necessary.
Because in markets where formal documentation is limited and financial records are often informal, algorithms alone cannot tell the full story. Creditworthiness, in these contexts, is not just a function of data—it is a function of behavior, relationships, and consistency over time.
This is where Asagun’s model finds its edge.
By embedding within the realities of the informal economy, his institution has been able to extend credit to individuals who would otherwise be categorized as “unbankable.” But this approach also raises a deeper question: Why has the broader financial system failed to do the same?
Part of the answer lies in structure. Traditional banks are not built to absorb the risk profile of small, informal businesses. Fintechs, on the other hand, are optimized for speed and scale, not necessarily for context.
The result is a system that either excludes or exploits.
Asagun’s work sits uncomfortably between both worlds—too grounded to be purely digital, and too adaptive to fit within traditional banking frameworks. But it is precisely this positioning that has begun to attract attention.
Between 2025 and 2026, he was named among Nigeria’s Top 50 Corporate Leaders, recognized as one of the country’s most influential CEOs by The Guardian, and listed in 40Under40 Nigeria’s “100 Persons of the Year.” These recognitions signal a shift in how leadership in finance is being defined—not just by profitability, but by relevance.
Still, recognition does not resolve the underlying challenge.
Nigeria’s MSME financing gap remains significant. Access to capital is still uneven. Financial literacy is still limited. And policy reforms, while ongoing, often lag behind the realities on the ground.
In this context, the real question is not whether models like Asagun’s work.
It is whether the system is willing to learn from them.
Because if the future of Nigeria’s economy depends on small businesses—as policymakers and analysts consistently argue—then the frameworks that support those businesses cannot remain misaligned with their realities.
What Asagun represents is not a perfect solution, but a working one.
And in a sector where theory often outpaces execution, that may be the more important distinction.
