After two decades of acquisition-led growth, one of Africa’s most widely spread banking groups has made returns, not reach, its measure of success. The early numbers are encouraging. The real test is whether the discipline lasts.
For most of its history, Access Bank measured progress by size. Acquisitions, entry into new markets, repeated capital raises and steady diversification turned a mid-sized Nigerian lender into one of Africa’s most extensive financial services groups, with total assets of ₦51.56 trillion at the end of 2025.
That strategy worked. But it has limits. Beyond a certain point, getting bigger stops being the best measure of a business, and does not necessarily translate into stronger returns
Access Holdings appears to have reached that point. More notably, it has said so itself. The Group now describes its strategy as a move “from scale to value,” and management has told shareholders that its central aim is to deliver stronger earnings per share and generate returns on equity that consistently exceed the cost of capital. After a period of heavy acquisition activity, the stated priority is to get more from the businesses it already owns.
That is the right ambition. Whether the Group can deliver it consistently is what will determine how investors value it over the next few years.
Why size alone is no longer enough
Scale matters in banking. A larger bank attracts more deposits, can serve bigger corporate clients, can spread the cost of technology and compliance across more customers, and is less exposed to any single economy.
But scale has costs, and they tend to arrive later than the benefits. Every acquisition brings new systems, staff, regulators, and risks. Every new country demands management time and capital. A bigger balance sheet produces more income, but also more credit exposure, larger funding needs, and heavier capital requirements.
During rapid expansion, these costs are easy to miss. Assets, deposits, and customer numbers keep rising, and the headline story is one of success, even where parts of the business earn less than the capital they consume.
Access Holdings’ 2025 results show both sides of this picture. Group profit before tax passed ₦1 trillion, and the cost-to-income ratio improved from 56.7% to 51.7%, a sign that the enlarged group is starting to run more efficiently. Yet return on average equity fell from 21.6% to 18.4%, reflecting higher impairment charges during the year, as the Group accelerated provisions on legacy loans and on exposures previously covered by regulatory forbearance.
Addressing these credit exposures, through appropriate provisioning, rather than carrying them forward, is the kind of decision that tends to pay off later. A cleaner balance sheet is a stronger base for the next phase than a flattering short-term profit figure. It also makes clear that future growth must come from better returns, not wider reach.
Every subsidiary needs a clear job
Access Holdings operates in markets with very different economies, competitors, and regulators. Some of its subsidiaries are mature and highly profitable. Others are newly acquired, being restructured, or still building a customer base.
Holding them all to the same short-term targets would be a mistake. An established bank, a recently acquired franchise, and a young payments business are at different stages and should be judged accordingly.
But those differences must have limits. Each significant subsidiary should have a clear economic purpose, a target return, and a timetable for reaching it. Where a business falls short, investors should be able to tell whether the cause is temporary, such as currency weakness or a one-off clean-up, or structural.
There is early evidence that the approach can work. Pre-tax profit from the Group’s subsidiaries elsewhere in Africa grew double-digit to about N284 billion in 2025 from ₦201 billion in the previous year, with Access Bank DR Congo alone doubling its net profit. Operations outside Nigeria now account for close to half of the Group’s pre-tax profit by segment.
The same discipline has to apply in the other direction. Where a business cannot reach acceptable returns within a reasonable period, the options should include restructuring it, bringing in partners, or reducing exposure. The goal is not to abandon every subsidiary that is struggling. It is to ensure that every naira of capital has a clear commercial reason to be where it is.
Nigeria: the biggest opportunity is at home
Nigeria remains the core of the Group, and it is where the most work remains. Pre-tax profit from the Nigerian business increased year on year by 8% in 2025, despite higher provisions and pressure on interest margins, which weighed on earnings.
The answer is unlikely to be another large acquisition or a wave of new branches. It is more likely to come from deepening existing customer relationships.
For individuals, that means bringing salary payments, savings, transfers, cards, and credit into one relationship. For businesses, it means handling collections, payroll, supplier payments, trade finance, and cash management. The more of a customer’s financial life a bank handles, the more stable and recurring its income becomes.
The Group’s non-banking businesses strengthen this case. Access Pensions, Access Insurance Brokers, and Hydrogen Payments provide the opportunities to grow fee-based income, while Oxygen X Finance focuses on digital consumer lending. Together, these businesses can broaden the Group’s earnings base, deepen customer relationships, and support stronger returns.
The economics still have to add up. Adding customers creates little value if serving them costs more than they bring in. Growing the loan book does little for profitability if credit losses and funding costs absorb the margin. The Nigerian business is where investors will see most clearly whether the strategy is working.
Making the international network pay
The Group’s international footprint is a genuine strategic asset. A Nigerian company that imports equipment, exports goods, or expands into other African countries needs banking services in several markets at once. A group present in those markets, and in financial centres such as London, can build deeper relationships and earn income from trade finance, payments, and foreign exchange.
Presence alone, however, does not guarantee returns. Some international subsidiaries add to the Group’s reach and reputation, while earning modest profits. That can be justified for a period where the long-term opportunity is clear, but investors should be able to see the reasoning and the timetable. Currency movements add a further layer of risk: gains earned in local currencies can shrink when translated into naira, as the Group’s 2025 accounts showed.
A diversified group creates value when its businesses, taken together, produce stronger and steadier earnings than they would on their own. Owning banks in many countries does not prove that. Consistent results do.
How investors can assess progress
For shareholders, the move from scale to value means using a different scorecard. Assets, customer numbers, and country count matter less. Profitability, efficiency, asset quality, and return on capital matter more. Over the next two to three years, a credible delivery of this strategy will show:
- return on equity held consistently above the cost of equity;
- further improvement in the cost-to-income ratio;
- loan-loss charges returning to normal levels once the legacy clean-up is complete;
- a rising share of earnings from fee-based and non-bank businesses;
- clear disclosure of returns by subsidiary and by region; and
- improved capacity for sustainable shareholder distributions from subsidiaries to the holding company, and from the holding company to shareholders.
That last point deserves attention. Consolidated profit and cash available to shareholders are not the same thing. Subsidiaries often have to retain capital for regulatory or commercial reasons, which limits what they can pass up to the parent. Access Holdings did not declare dividends for FY2025 amid outstanding regulatory requirements, and its Board has said the decision does not reflect weaker performance and that payments could resume once those conditions are met.
How quickly that happens will be an important indicator of progress in restoring dividend capacity.
More broadly, the holding company must show that capital retained in a subsidiary earns more there than it would elsewhere in the Group. The clearer the link between each business and the Group’s overall returns, the stronger the investment case becomes.
The harder phase
Access has shown that it can build. Running a large multinational portfolio well is a different skill. Acquisitions and market entries come with visible milestones. Strong returns, efficient use of capital and dependable shareholder payouts require consistent delivery, year after year.
The early signs are encouraging: better efficiency, stronger profits from the African subsidiaries, a willingness to take provisions early, and a clearly stated focus on returns. They suggest that management understands the nature of the task. What remains is to sustain that discipline long enough for the results to speak for themselves.
Scale has given Access Holdings a platform few African financial groups can match. The task now is to show that this platform can earn returns that justify the capital, complexity, and management attention it demands.