NEWS
Access Holdings Under Pressure as OPay’s Explosive Rise Raises Questions Over Africa Expansion Strategy
Access Holdings Plc’s ambitious expansion across Africa and other international markets is increasingly coming under investor scrutiny as questions grow over whether the billions of dollars committed to building a vast cross-border banking empire are generating enough value for shareholders.
Despite remaining Nigeria’s largest bank by assets and one of Africa’s biggest banking franchises by customer numbers, Access Holdings is facing an uncomfortable comparison with fast-growing fintech giant OPay, whose rapid rise in Nigeria’s digital financial services market has highlighted how dramatically the economics of banking and consumer finance are changing.
The contrast is striking. Access has spent years acquiring banks, expanding into new countries and building a continental financial network, while OPay, barely eight years into its Nigerian journey, has rapidly built a massive digital customer base, expanded transaction volumes and moved into profitability.
For investors, the question is becoming harder to ignore: has Access built an enormous banking empire only to discover that some of the fastest growth and most attractive valuations are now being captured by digitally native financial platforms?
Access Bank Chief Executive Officer, Roosevelt Ogbonna said in July 2024 that the group had invested about $1.2 billion in its African and international banking subsidiaries.
The investment formed part of Access Holdings’ broader ambition to build a continent-wide banking powerhouse capable of capturing trade, payments, corporate banking and cross-border financial flows across Africa and beyond.
The group’s aggressive international expansion saw it acquire and pursue assets linked to institutions including Standard Chartered Plc, Atlas Mara Ltd. and KCB Group Plc, among others.
The strategy was designed partly to reduce the group’s dependence on Nigeria, where the weakness of the naira, difficult macroeconomic conditions and rising non-performing loans have posed significant challenges for banks.
Access pushed deeper into southern and eastern Africa, where management saw opportunities for stronger profitability than in some parts of West Africa.
Ogbonna had previously described the strategy in simple terms, saying, “We are chasing the money.”
By 2024, however, management was already signalling that the acquisition-heavy phase of the group’s growth was coming to an end. The focus, according to Ogbonna, was shifting towards consolidation after years of acquisitions, technology investments and geographical expansion. That shift may now prove critical.
Access remains Nigeria’s largest bank by assets, but size has not translated into a market valuation comparable with the expectations being placed on OPay. With a market capitalization of about ₦1.46 trillion, Access Holdings is valued at roughly one-quarter of OPay’s prospective $4 billion IPO valuation.
The comparison is not a perfect one. Traditional banks operate with significantly larger balance sheets, face stricter regulation, carry credit risk and must meet substantial capital requirements. Fintech valuations, on the other hand, are often driven by expectations around future growth, customer acquisition, transaction volumes and the ability to scale digital products quickly. Yet the enormous valuation gap is difficult for investors to overlook. It reinforces concerns that Access’s rapid growth in assets and geographical footprint has not yet translated into returns strong enough to excite the market. The timing is particularly significant because OPay’s explosive growth in Nigeria has coincided with the period during which Access was committing substantial capital to overseas expansion. While Access went abroad in search of new opportunities, OPay and other fintechs were rapidly capturing Nigeria’s mass-market payments, money transfers, merchant acquisition and consumer-finance businesses.
OPay’s latest financial figures demonstrate why investors are paying close attention to the fintech sector. The company reported 2025 revenue of $536.25 million, representing a remarkable 161 per cent increase from the previous year. Even more striking was its move into profitability.
OPay recorded net income of $72.47 million, equivalent to about ₦101.45 billion, compared with a loss of $50.98 million in 2024. Its 2025 profit was also larger than the ₦76.3 billion profit after tax reported by Sterling Bank during the same period. The growth was driven by the scale of OPay’s digital ecosystem.
Gross transaction value surged 115 per cent to $358 billion. Lending jumped 285 per cent to $938.3 million, while monthly active users rose 57 per cent to 39.3 million. These numbers illustrate the enormous commercial potential of high-frequency digital financial services.
Fintech platforms are increasingly monetising millions of everyday transactions, including transfers, merchant payments, wallet balances, consumer credit and digital financial distribution.
For Access Holdings, which significantly expanded its Nigerian retail presence through the acquisition of Diamond Bank in 2019, OPay’s rise raises an important strategic question.
Is Access extracting enough value from its vast domestic customer base? Access has consistently argued that its strategy extends far beyond Nigeria. The group has built a presence in 15 African countries, while also maintaining operations in the United Kingdom, France and the United Arab Emirates.
Ogbonna has described the ambition as the creation of a globally connected African banking platform. Access also reportedly has about 60 million customers, placing it among Africa’s largest retail banking franchises by customer count.
On paper, those numbers are formidable. But investors are increasingly focused on what those customers and assets are producing for shareholders.
Scale alone is no longer enough. The new test is whether a financial institution can efficiently convert its customer base, deposits, technology and distribution network into strong returns on equity and sustainable profit growth. That is where fintech companies such as OPay and Moniepoint have begun rewriting traditional assumptions about financial services.
Access Holdings reported profit after tax of ₦743 billion for the full year 2025, representing a 15.6 per cent increase from ₦642 billion recorded a year earlier. Interest income rose 5.4 per cent to ₦3.27 trillion, while net fee income increased 40.9 per cent to ₦585 billion.
However, beneath the headline profit figures were signs of significant pressure. Loan impairment charges surged 209 per cent to ₦287.3 billion. Impairment on other financial assets climbed even more sharply, rising 463 per cent to ₦258.8 billion. Total comprehensive income fell to ₦459 billion from ₦1.01 trillion, affected by a ₦272 billion foreign-currency translation loss and a ₦137 billion fair-value loss on debt securities. These figures highlight some of the risks associated with operating across multiple markets and managing a vast international balance sheet. Currency movements, differing credit cycles, regulatory requirements and economic conditions across several jurisdictions can all complicate earnings. The market’s caution is reflected in Access Holdings’ valuation of about 0.37 times book value. Such a deep discount can indicate investor concerns about future earnings quality, rising credit costs, capital requirements, foreign-exchange volatility and uncertainty over whether the group’s international expansion will eventually generate returns above its cost of equity. The debate is now shifting from whether Access should have expanded so aggressively to whether it can make its existing investments work harder.
Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, chairman of Access Holdings, had told investors during the group’s 2024 rights-issue event that companies eventually need to consolidate and sweat the assets they have built. That challenge has now become central to Access’s next phase of growth. The group must balance regulatory capital requirements, investment needs and shareholder expectations for stronger returns. Its expansion has undoubtedly created strategic advantages.
Access now has greater geographical reach, a more diversified business, access to cross-border trade flows and exposure to potentially faster-growing African markets. But those advantages have come at a cost. The expansion required substantial capital and introduced greater regulatory complexity. It also exposed the group to currency translation effects, different credit environments and execution risks across multiple jurisdictions.
Investors are also seeking greater clarity about the group’s operations and earnings outlook, particularly following delays in the filing of quarterly financial results that have made it more difficult for the market to obtain timely snapshots of performance. As traditional banking assumptions come under pressure, OPay has emerged as one of the most attractive targets in Africa’s financial technology space.
The company is becoming the new bride of the financial sector, with investors and established banking institutions seeking opportunities to participate in its growth ahead of its anticipated public listing.
Standard Bank Group Ltd., Africa’s largest lender by assets and the parent company of Stanbic IBTC Holdings Plc, is reportedly in early-stage negotiations to acquire an equity stake in Nigeria-focused digital payments platform OPay Digital Services Ltd.
The potential transaction comes as OPay prepares for a New York initial public offering that could value the company at about $4 billion.
That would represent a doubling of the $2 billion valuation OPay achieved during its Series C funding round in 2021.
The fintech has retained Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. as lead underwriters for the planned United States listing.
The growing investor interest reflects a broader shift in the financial services industry. Investors are increasingly attracted to businesses capable of using technology to reach millions of consumers at relatively low marginal costs while generating revenue from transactions, payments, credit and other digital services.
Nigerian lenders including Access Bank and Guaranty Trust Holding Company Plc embraced the holding company structure partly on the belief that future growth would come from a broader range of financial services.
The HoldCo model opened opportunities in pensions, asset management, payments and other non-bank businesses. But the emerging lesson from the market appears more complicated. Diversification alone has not necessarily produced the strongest growth story.
Instead, some of the most impressive growth has come from mastering core retail financial services and using technology to solve consumer problems at scale. Fintechs such as OPay and Moniepoint have demonstrated the commercial power of digital payments, merchant services and technology-driven consumer lending. This does not mean traditional banks are becoming irrelevant.
On the contrary, banks still possess powerful advantages, including banking licences, established deposit franchises, access to capital, deep customer relationships and regulatory experience. The challenge is whether they can use those advantages as effectively as fintechs use technology. The next phase of Access Holdings’ story is unlikely to be defined by another round of major acquisitions.
Instead, investors will be watching to see whether the group can generate stronger returns from the empire it has already assembled.
OPay’s rapid transformation from a loss-making company into a profitable fintech giant demonstrates the value investors place on scalable digital payments and efficient financial distribution.
Access has a significantly larger customer base, a banking licence, a massive deposit franchise and an extensive regional network. Those are formidable assets. But the central challenge is converting that scale into a more compelling shareholder proposition.
Access Holdings’ African and international platform still holds considerable strategic value in trade finance, remittances, corporate banking and regional payments. The question is no longer whether the expansion made strategic sense.
The real question is whether Access can now prove that its vast network can deliver stronger returns on assets and equity while defending its Nigerian retail banking franchise against a new generation of digitally native financial giants.
As OPay races toward a potential multibillion-dollar IPO and fintech competitors continue to deepen their hold on everyday financial transactions, the pressure on Access is mounting.
The bank has built the empire. Investors are now waiting to see whether it can make the empire pay.