Access Holdings says it brought 78,438 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises onto a financing platform in 2025, as the Nigerian financial-services group expanded a model combining banking, digital payments, app-based credit and business advice.
The group’s 2025 Sustainability Report records N34.2 billion in financing for women-owned businesses. It also reports 354,156 loans to women and women-owned enterprises, worth about N67.45 billion in total. The remaining N33.2 bill...
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ion went to individual women, while lending to women and women-owned businesses represented 24 per cent of the relevant loan portfolio, according to the report.
The figures distinguish business finance from lending to women as individuals. Access Holdings also reports that 48,000 MSMEs received training through its MSME Toolkit Initiative, which provides support intended to strengthen entrepreneurs’ business-management skills.
The group’s offering spans several parts of its business. Access Bank provides banking and working-capital services, Hydrogen Payment Services supports merchants’ digital payments, and Oxygen X Finance offers app-based credit. By bringing these services together, the company aims to serve smaller businesses through more than traditional branch-based lending.
Digital payments may also help create transaction records that lenders can use when assessing creditworthiness. That could be valuable to businesses with limited collateral or formal borrowing histories, though the reported figures alone do not show whether access to finance improved their performance or survival.
Nor does the aggregate financing total represent a grant fund available to any business that applies. Individual borrowers remain subject to product terms, eligibility requirements and documentation, as Naijapiz noted in its coverage of the figures.
Access Holdings presents its MSME work as part of a wider financial-inclusion and sustainability programme. The group also reported reaching more than 2.5 million low-income individuals in 2025. Proshare’s review of the company’s sustainability disclosures placed the inclusion measures alongside environmental indicators, including a N92.14 billion green-asset portfolio and a 28.47 per cent reduction in operational greenhouse-gas emissions against the stated 2022 baseline.
The company’s sustainability report is the primary source for its reported measures, and includes independent assurance of selected information. That assurance does not cover every statement or establish that the lending produced lasting improvements for borrowers. The commercial test will be whether the loans are repaid, the portfolio remains sound and businesses can sustain their operations and grow.
For financial institutions, reaching large numbers of small firms through digital channels may reduce some costs of serving borrowers dispersed across regions. But scale is only one measure of success. The quality of the credit decisions, the durability of repayment and the financial health of the businesses will determine whether the approach can expand responsibly.
Source: Noah Wire Services
