Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make up 96% of all businesses in Nigeria, employ 84% of the workforce, and contribute nearly 48% of the country’s GDP. These businesses are the backbone of the economy, but they’re still being underserved.
Access to formal credit remains a major barrier with many SMEs still relying on informal lending networks. Often, when they do approach financial institutions, they’re met with slow approvals, outdated systems, and requirements that don’t reflect the realities of running a small business in Nigeria.
If institutions want to scale lending to this critical segment without dramatically increasing cost or risk, they need flexible infrastructure, real-time data, and scalable systems that support modern lending products.
Which is exactly what Oradian enables.
Modernising SME lending with a cloud-native core
When high-growth lender, Esquire Financing, transformed to Oradian’s cloud-native core banking platform, they needed to redesign how their business worked.
At the time, their teams were battling disconnected systems, siloed operations, and slow paper-based processes. Loan approvals could take days, while reporting was still done manually. This limited innovation to only what their legacy stack could support.
But within just three months of signing with us, they went live on Instafin, our core banking system built for speed, integration, and scale.
Here’s what changed for them:
- Loan approvals accelerated from days to hours
- Manual, paper-heavy steps were eliminated with digital workflows
- Cheque issuance, rebate logic, and rediscounting were automated and auditable
- Real-time dashboards gave teams visibility across operations
- A flexible API layer opened the door for integrations with onboarding, scoring, and fintech services
From legacy systems to billion-dollar valuation in two years
The difference was immediate. Processes that used to span teams and take days now happen in hours. Internal teams work faster, customers get funded sooner and most importantly, the business is enabled to grow now that they’re backed by a platform that can scale into new geographies, partners, and customer segments.
In under 2.5 years, this transformation helped the lender triple their loan portfolio, streamline compliance, and go fully paperless. Their transformation became the foundation for strategic expansion. They are now in the process of seeking a $1 billion valuation.
For institutions in Nigeria looking to compete on speed and future-proof their infrastructure, this is the benchmark. Whether you’re funding SMEs in Lagos, Aba, or Kaduna, your infrastructure should work as fast as your ambitions.
