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The Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF), an initiative of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), deposit money banks, licenced mobile money operators and banking agents fostering financial inclusion, has disclosed that the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country have the least access to banking.

SANEF stated this in a new report on financial access touch-points released on Tuesday at a press conference in Lagos. The Northeast, according to the report, has five percent financial access touch-points; and the Southeast has seven percent.

The CBN-funded report shows that the Southwest region leads in financial access with 54 percent, followed by the South-south region with 12 percent; North-central (11 percent) and the Northwest (10 percent).

According to the report, Nigeria has 5,600 bank branches; 17,600 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs); 15,000 Point of Sale terminals; and 51,754 Agents as at December 2017.

Bolaji Lawal, Executive Director at Guaranty Trust Bank, who is also part of the SANEF’s technical committee, said the SANEF initiative is to include 40 million low-income and unserved Nigerians into the financial system, increase financial access points from the current 50,000 to 500,000 by 2020, and deepen access to mobile and digital financial products and services such as savings accounts, microloans and insurance.

He added that there are on-going efforts to drastically accelerate financial inclusion in the country.

The CBN, the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS), commercial banks and mobile operators are currently working on modalities to take the Bank Verification Number (BVN) enrolment to the head offices of the 774 local government areas, he said.

“We are committed to enrol 40 million new unique BVNs between now and 2020: 10 million in 2018, 15 million in 2019, and 15 million in 2020,” said Lawal. “NIBSS will pay agents N100 for every unique BVN enrolled.”

Since the launch of the SANEF earlier this year, over 70,000 new financial access points have been created across the country.

Lawal added that 10,000 remote BVN devices ordered by the NIBSS are currently being deployed to banks, mobile money operators and the super agents.