The Silent Tax: Why Friction Is The Greatest Barrier To Nigerian Wealth

By Ochai Akoh, Group CDO / CEO, Coronation Technology Limited

There is a cost embedded in almost every financial interaction in Nigeria that no one openly charges for, yet everyone pays. No regulator sets its rate, and it doesn’t appear on any invoice or fee schedule. But it compounds quietly, every single day, across millions of transactions.

It is the cost of friction.

Think about what it takes to grow your money in our market. The phone call to confirm a trade that a notification should have handled. The branch visit for a paper form that has no reason to exist in 2026. The investment window that closed because onboarding took a week. The retirement savings in one silo, the equity portfolio in another with no connective tissue between them.

In an economy where inflation can quietly erode purchasing power in real time, every hour of unnecessary delay has a measurable cost. Friction isn’t a nuisance; it is a heavy anchor dragging down the ship of wealth creation.

The Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight

Here is the good news: Nigeria’s capital market is on fire in the best way. In 2025, trading on the Nigerian Exchange hit a record ₦11.23 trillion, more than double the previous year. The All-Share Index returned 51.19%, putting Nigeria among the world’s top five equity markets. Market capitalisation surged 125% to over ₦123 trillion, and the capital market’s share of GDP climbed from 13% to 33%.

The momentum is undeniable. But here is the kicker: this growth is happening despite the friction, not because it has been solved. Now, imagine what becomes possible when we fix the pipes.

Nigeria’s median age is 18.3 years. Over 70% of the population is under 30. These are people who grew up streaming music instantly and sending money via WhatsApp. They have zero tolerance for a week onboarding process and a PDF form sent by email. And with 93% mobile phone ownership across the country, the infrastructure for digital participation already exists in most people’s pockets.

Yet financial inclusion sits at just 74%, with 28.8 million adults still completely shut out of the financial system. Insurance penetration is a mere 3%. Pension coverage reaches just 8%. That gap isn’t just a problem; it is our biggest opportunity.

What Smart Platforms Actually Change

A smart platform isn’t just a shiny app with a cool dark mode. It is a fundamental rewiring of how financial products and people connect. When we do this right, we change three vital things:

Collapsing Distance: I’m not talking about kilometers, but the time between deciding to invest and actually doing it. When everything happens in one digital flow, a “Tuesday morning” decision is honored by “Tuesday afternoon,” not Friday after two follow-up calls and a prayer.

Creating Context: Most platforms know a lot about you but use almost none of it. Your wealth manager might be working off a snapshot of your life from two years ago. Smart platforms use data to make advice relevant to your actual life—like knowing you just had a child. That is the difference between a service and a real relationship.

Building Trust: One of the most powerful barriers to wealth creation in Nigeria is not volatility or inflation it is the quiet anxiety of not knowing where your money is. Smart platforms make the invisible visible: balances, performance, options accessible in real time on your phone, without calling anyone. When transparency goes up, participation follows. People invest more consistently, hold longer, and engage more deliberately.

The Roadmap for the Future

Connect Before You Create: We don’t necessarily need more products; we need existing ones to talk to each other. A single digital identity is worth more than ten separate apps

Design for People, Not Org Charts: You don’t care which subsidiary manages your fund; you care about your goals. Platforms that organize around humans win loyalty.

Educate as You Serve: Financial illiteracy is just friction by another name. The best platforms are becoming educators, not just transaction processors.
The Bigger Picture

Nigeria does not lack wealth creation potential. The assets are here. The entrepreneurial energy is visible in every city and sector. The young, digitally engaged population hungry to participate in formal markets they are here too, and they are not waiting for permission.

At Coronation, we don’t see this as a user experience problem, but as an economic inefficiency embedded in the financial system one that suppresses participation, reduces velocity of capital, and ultimately limits wealth creation at scale. Our response is deliberate and structural. Through Coronation Technology, we are building a unified digital platform that collapses the fragmentation across wealth management, insurance, pensions, and capital markets into a single, orchestrated ecosystem. This is anchored on a shared digital identity, a centralized data layer, and interoperable services that allow customers and partners to access, move, and grow capital in real time without institutional friction. The strategic intent is clear: to reduce the cost of financial interaction across the value chain, increase customer lifetime value through deeper engagement, and create a platform that enables not just Coronation entities, but the broader financial ecosystem to scale more efficiently. In doing so, we are positioning Coronation as a core infrastructure provider for the next phase of Nigeria’s wealth creation journey.

We are confident that we will participate in writing a different chapter of the Nigerian wealth story. One where financial participation is no longer a privilege of the informed few, but a clear, accessible, and genuinely rewarding experience available to the many.

That is worth building for.

Ochai Akoh is the CEO of Coronation Technology Limited, the shared-services technology subsidiary of Coronation Group one of Nigeria’s leading financial services conglomerates. He has nearly two decades of experience in digital banking and financial technology transformation