Lenders battle against fraudsters; a case for an industry blacklist
As digital lending surges in Nigeria, fraud has quietly become one of the industry’s biggest threats, with coordinated identity theft and serial loan defaulters overwhelming individual lenders who battle in isolation. The danger isn’t unique. Kenya offers a stark warning, with an estimated 3.2 million people blacklisted on the country’s TransUnion credit bureau. Without a unified industry blacklist to identify and curb repeat offenders, Nigerian lenders risk following the same path, continually staying several steps behind increasingly sophisticated fraudsters.
Nigeria’s problems will be solved by access to credit
Access to credit has historically been difficult in Nigeria. This is because, for years, big banks were the sole providers of financial services and those banks didn’t care too much for retail banking.
