An Unlikely Alliance Posts Sub‑1% Default Rate Defying Nigerian Lending Logic

Nigeria’s lending market has a long history of flaunting numbers that make headlines almost always because of size. It’s often a continuous reel of billions deployed, trillions projected, and ambitious targets announced at press conferences. But a new partnership between fintech firm Nomba and Globus Bank is trying to shift the conversation from how much money goes out the door to how much actually comes back.

The two companies today announced a sub‑1% non‑performing loan (NPL) ratio on a NGN 21.3 B (~USD 15.5 M) credit portfolio, a figure that stands in contrast to industry benchmarks where business‑lending NPLs routinely climb past 5% and 10%.

The portfolio spans wholesale and retail (39%), professional services (28%), food and hospitality (11%), oil and gas (11%), and FMCG (8%). And the partners are not stopping there. Nomba’s ambition is a NGN 500 B (USD 365 M) credit book, with plans to build a pipeline of institutional credit partnerships and expand into logistics, healthcare, and manufacturing.

What makes the sub‑1% NPL possible is a fundamentally different approach to underwriting. Nomba sits at the centre of its merchants’ daily transaction activity, capturing sales, settlements, and cash‑flow patterns in real time. When a merchant applies for credit, the facility is sized against live transaction revenue rather than historical documents. When risk needs to be managed, it is managed against what is actually happening in the business today, the company explains.

The second and more consequential difference is collateral. Most Nigerian businesses cannot offer the physical assets traditional lenders require. Nomba’s response is a digitised collateral framework that ties a borrower’s access to the company’s broader platform ecosystem, which includes payments, settlement flows, and business‑continuity tools, directly to their credit behaviour. This way, repayment is structurally embedded in how the business operates day to day, not merely a financial obligation sitting outside the business.

“What distinguishes this facility is not its size but the quality of the underlying credit decisions,” said Elias Igbinakenzua, managing director and chief executive officer of Globus Bank. “The NPL performance of this portfolio is clear evidence of what can be achieved when capital is deployed based on verified transaction data.”

Nomba CEO Yinka Adewale added, “The Nigerian credit conversation has been driven by how much has been disbursed. We believe the more important question is how much has been repaid and why.”

The announcement lands at a moment when the broader lending environment in Nigeria is under significant strain. Bank impairment charges have surged, with eight of the country’s largest banks booking a combined NGN 1.96 T (USD 1.4 B) in the first nine months of 2025 alone.

Meanwhile, the total stock of NPLs in the banking system surpassed NGN 1.57 T (USD 1.14 B) in early 2025. High‑profile defaults have also rattled the ecosystem; Moniepoint has taken Alerzo to court over a NGN 4.3 B working‑capital facility, while top lender, Access Bank, has pursued recovery of NGN 4.6 B lost to a staff‑assisted asset‑finance scheme.

These events underline the reality that in lending, disbursement is the easy part, and repayment is where models are tested. As one analysis of Nigeria’s credit landscape put it, “payment data improves underwriting, but it does not cancel human behaviour.”

Nomba and Globus Bank are betting that a model built on live transaction data and a digital‑collateral framework can produce a different outcome. The sub‑1% NPL on NGN 21.3 B is the first piece of evidence. Whether the model can hold at NGN 500 B is the next big test.