What do bankers do when they retire?

Anybody ever wonder where bankers go when they hang their suits? In places like Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, or even South Africa, banking is one of the most respected jobs anyone can land. It’s the kind of career parents brag about at weddings. From the first day you walk into the branch lobby, you can already see the climb ahead: officer, manager, General Manager, Executive Director, maybe even CEO if the stars align and the board likes you. 

But by 60, or a little after, the story changes. The suits are still there, but the meetings stop. The emails stop. The driver stops coming. Then you ask what happens to all these people? Because let’s be honest, it’s not like they disappear. 

Bankers live long, healthy lives. They’ve had premium health insurance for decades, eaten good food, and lived in well-planned neighborhoods. So you know for sure they’re not dying (at least most of them aren’t), retirement has just come knocking. But retirement for a banker is a strange kind of silence. You go from managing billions in assets and chairing credit committees to managing your own time, which is somehow even harder.

Banking is tough, running your own thing is tougher

Banking has always been one of the most demanding careers anyone can choose. The pressure is constant. There are targets to meet, regulators to satisfy, customers to calm, and internal politics to manage. Yet, within all that chaos, there is order. 

A banker works inside a system where departments, committees, and support teams keep everything moving. When problems arise, there is always someone to escalate to, a structure that absorbs the shock. You can delegate, review, and continue your day knowing that entire units exist just to make your work easier.

Retirement changes that rhythm totally. When you decide to take the leap and start something of your own, you quickly begin to understand how much that structure carried you through your banking years. The comfort you once thought was just a process turns out to have been the glue holding everything together. Now every responsibility rests entirely on you.

There’s no IT department to call when your system crashes or your emails stop working. No strategy team to help you fine-tune your expansion ideas or analyse new markets. No HR to filter job candidates or mediate internal issues. Every decision, no matter how small, sits squarely on your desk. And that realization can be heavy.

Many retired bankers experience this moment of reckoning. They discover that the operational smoothness they once enjoyed came from an intricate, expensive network of professionals and systems built to keep large institutions stable. 

Once you step out of that world, you see how complex it is to rebuild even a fraction of it on your own. Tasks that once seemed simple now stretch your patience. Processes that took a day in the bank might take weeks without the same resources. Trying to recreate that level of coordination and support feels almost impossible, especially when you’re starting small.

So what do they do and where do they go?

According to internal surveys and informal data shared within financial circles, a significant number of senior bankers who leave formal employment tend to find themselves gravitating toward two major sectors: real estate and financial services. Roughly 60% move into property: buying land, developing housing, leasing commercial spaces, or flipping buildings for profit. 

Many bankers made tons of cash from bonuses and things we can’t talk about which answers where the money for these projects come from. Bankers also have world-class rolodex of premium contacts and investors. Easy to raise tons of cash for investments. Another 30% stay within finance, building smaller, more focused versions of the institutions they once worked in. The remaining group often branches into consulting, agriculture, or philanthropy, depending on their interests and how financially comfortable they are at the point of retirement.

The property path is common for a reason. Real estate feels safe, visible, predictable, and often rewarding in the long run. For many former bank executives, it also feels familiar. They already understand project financing, market cycles, and how to bring investors together. Their long-standing relationships with developers, contractors, and fellow financiers give them a head start. Unfortunately, real estate isn’t the kind of venture you stroll into casually. It takes serious capital to get started, and it doesn’t yield returns overnight. Projects can drag for years, and profit margins can vanish quickly if costs rise or buyers hesitate. So while property may look like the obvious path for retired bankers, it’s one that demands resilience and patience.

Also read: What is Lendsqr, and how does it work?

Then there’s the financial services route, which tends to attract those who can’t quite detach from the mechanics of finance. These are people who still enjoy structuring credit deals, evaluating risk, and running operations. They have the knowledge and network to create lending, microfinance, or investment businesses. But what they quickly discover is that running such a venture outside a bank is far less straightforward. 

In a corporate structure, everything they needed (technology, compliance systems, reporting frameworks) was already built and maintained by teams of specialists. Reproducing even a fraction of that as an independent operator can be draining. The systems cost money, the regulatory requirements are complex, and managing borrower relationships personally can be overwhelming.

For many, that’s the real surprise of post-banking life. Those who succeed in this route often do so by leaning on technology and partnerships to fill the gaps that used to be covered by entire departments.

Also read: Banking as a service explained: All you need to know

Where technology should meet experience

This is interestingly where Lendsqr comes in. We’ve worked with lenders across Africa, from young founders testing their first credit ideas to industry veterans who have spent decades running some of the continent’s biggest financial operations.

Our work has shown that the transition from banking to entrepreneurship becomes smoother when experience meets the right technology. The people behind Lendsqr aren’t strangers to the realities of finance either. Many of us have walked the banking corridors too. We understand how different it feels to move from managing a lending team to actually running a lending business on your own.

So if you’re a retired banker looking to start a lending venture whether it’s microcredit, SME loans, or something niche. Lendsqr was built with that journey in mind. We provide the kind of systems that make your new venture feel structured and organized, just like the environment you were used to. 

You get an all-in-one system, automated processes,  configurable borrower verification, detailed reporting and insights that keep your business grounded without breaking your budget. You can even scale across countries, handle compliance, and attract investors without the enterprise drama that used to define your old world.

We can’t get you licensed (that’s the job of your local regulators) or hire your first CFO, but we take away the operational frustrations that often discourage many experienced bankers from starting something of their own. By merging your experience with technology that actually works, you can focus on building the kind of lending business that reflects the discipline and standards you spent your career mastering.

Also read: All you need to know about core banking applications

Lendsqr’s tech makes room for every retired banker with a big idea 

While we agree not everyone wants to dive into another high-stress venture after 35 years in corporate life. Many simply want to rest and let their money work. For this group, real estate remains king. But even there, our technology can help. Let’s say you own a few properties and want to rent them out, but you don’t want to deal with unreliable tenants or late payments. Lendsqr’s platform can help you create a system to check tenants’ credit backgrounds, evaluate affordability, and even manage recurring payments.

That way, you can turn your years of discipline and prudence into a quieter, steadier kind of business. While a few, like Tony Elumelu or Jim Ovia, transition into chairmen of empires they built themselves. Most simply dream a new dream and learn to redefine and create systems after years of structure.Retirement from banking doesn’t mean the end of relevance. It’s simply a shift from managing other people’s money to managing your own ambitions. And with the right mix of technology, experience, and maybe a bit of help from platforms like Lendsqr, the second act can be just as rewarding as the first. Maybe quieter, but hopefully, a lot less stressful.