Finance houses seek regulations, incentives to drive growth

To ensure a standardised and regulated business environment, the Finance Houses Association of Nigeria (FHAN), has called on the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to ensure the finance sector is properly regulated with increased ethical standards from members.

The association, which is a self-regulatory body of licensed finance companies operating in Nigeria, also asked for incentives to make the sector more attractive to do business.

President of FHAN, Akinwande Ademosu, who said this at the association’s yearly general meeting in Lagos, said those that want to engage in financial services must be regulated and their financial responsibilities properly checked.

While presenting a review of the association’s performance and review of the business environment during the period of 2017 and 2018, he said for the subsector specifically, the years posed enormous business challenges, with a good number of finance companies posting poor financial results.

However on the upbeat side, he noted that some of their member houses remained resilient and impressive by leveraging on innovation and their unique strengths to take advantage of the growth opportunities in the economy.

Given the nation’s economic growth potential, financial inclusion and the inherent demand for its kind of financial services, Ademosu expressed optimism for growth in the subsector.

He urged members to position themselves and take advantage of opportunities in the subsectors by becoming innovative in their products’ design and service offerings.

Ademosu, who in his speech as the new president of FHAN, promised to embark on a more purposeful regulator’s engagement and partnerships with other financial institutions’ councils to review policies and framework as well as present a position paper to CBN on salient issues affecting members.

He also informed the house in repositioning the association by building and improving existing systems and structures.

“For instance, if a bank is running low in capital, they will tell the bank to borrow from a certain banks, but we don’t have that luxury, we have to struggle to get funding.

“We believe CBN started to make provision for us after doing necessary checks on our competencies and capacities to allow us to draw from available funds and also to expand the areas that we can reach like trading in local foreign exchange,” he said.