Access Bank’s $1.2 Billion International Expansion Faces Scrutiny as OPay Gains Ground in Nigeria

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…OPay’s Growth Sharpens Questions Over Access Capital Allocation as Valuation Lags

Access Holdings Plc’s expansion across Africa and beyond is facing question marks from investors as the lender’s asset growth and cross-border ambitions have yet to translate into a valuation comparable with faster-growing digital-finance rivals such as OPay Ltd.

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 spending was part of a broader strategy to build a continent-wide bank, with the lender targeting trade, payments and corporate-banking flows across African markets and beyond.

Access rapid push abroad, led to the snapping up of assets from Standard Chartered Plc, Atlas Mara Ltd., and KCB Group Plc, among others, to counter naira weakness and non-performing loans.

The question now is whether the investment has spread Access too thin just as fintechs have intensified their hold on Nigeria’s mass-market payments, transfers, merchant acquisition and consumer-finance businesses.

“We are chasing the money,” Ogbonna said during Access Holdings’ rights-issue presentation at the Nigerian Exchange in 2024, describing southern and eastern Africa as more profitable banking markets than parts of West Africa.

He said Access had shifted from an investment phase into a period of consolidation after years of acquisitions, expansion and technology spending.

Scale vs. Market Value

Access remains Nigeria’s largest bank by assets, but the market is placing a far lower value on the group than on OPay’s prospective $4 billion IPO valuation.

At ₦1.46 trillion, Access’s market capitalization is roughly one-quarter of OPay’s proposed valuation.

That disparity…