Banking on Nigeria

Stephen Jennings, the New Zealand-born founder and chief executive of Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital, is setting up a consumer finance business in Nigeria with hopes to tap the fast-growing economy’s rising middle class. RenCap is hoping to replicate the success of its Russian consumer finance business, which eight years after its start has 5 million customers, 4500 employees and is targeting $130m in operating profit this year. Jennings said the economy of Nigeria, with its almost 160 million inhabitants, would be ideal for a technology and scale-driven consumer finance business. “This can become a bigger and more profitable business than the one we have in Russia,” he said.