Access

What began in 1989 as a mid-tier commercial lender has become the anchor of Access Holdings, a financial services group whose reach now stretches from Lagos to London, Dubai, Paris, and Hong Kong. The 2019 Diamond Bank merger remains the moment most people point to as the turning point, but by the end of 2025 Access Bank was serving more than 63 million customers through over 900 branches and service outlets in 24 markets across three continents, one of Africa's largest banks by both customer base and total assets.

The 2025 financial year kept that growth going: gross revenue rose to ₦5.53 trillion, profit before tax climbed 16.2% to ₦1.01 trillion, total assets grew 24.2% to ₦51.56 trillion, and customer deposits jumped 53.4% to ₦34.56 trillion. Access finally completed its long-running acquisition of Standard Chartered's Cameroon business in late 2025, layering onto earlier completions in Angola, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zambia to leave the bank with subsidiaries across roughly 14 African countries and a network serving upwards of 52 million customers on a single payments platform.

Access Bank was the first African lender to sign the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Banking, and its ESG programmes run alongside visible initiatives like the Access Bank Lagos City Marathon, now one of the continent's biggest sporting and tourism events. On the digital side, the Access More app has been processing well over a billion transactions a year, a measure of how much of the bank's day-to-day business has shifted onto mobile and online channels. In mid-2026 the bank picked up 16 honours at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence, one of the strongest hauls by any African lender that year, spanning Best Bank titles, SME banking, digital banking leadership, and sustainable finance across its African markets.

Not every subsidiary has had an easy ride: Access Bank Ghana, for instance, posted lower profit after tax in 2025 than in 2024 even as its balance sheet grew, a reminder that a pan-African footprint means absorbing local shocks alongside local wins. Taken as a group, though, Access Bank heads into 2026 bigger than it was twelve months earlier, still acquiring, still winning awards, and still the name most Nigerians reach for when they think of homegrown banking that has gone truly continental.