L-R: Daniel Anyaegbu, Chief Technical Officer, Sycamore Group; Elizabeth Oyelade
Chief of Staff & Head of Finance, Sycamore Group; Babatunde Akin-Moses, CEO, Sycamore Group; Onyinye Okonji, Cofounder/CCO, Sycamore Group; and Gbenga Magbagbeola, Managing Director, Sycamore Investment and Asset Management Ltd at the signing of Sycamore’s oversubscribed commercial paper offering in Lagos recently.
Sycamore, a Lagos-based financial services company, has received a microfinance bank licence from the Central Bank of Nigeria, a move that gives its more than 400,000 customers direct access to deposit accounts and faster payment processing through the national payments infrastructure.
The licence, granted to a new entity called Sycamore Microfinance Bank, allows the company to accept customer deposits under a regulated banking framework. It also connects Sycamore directly to the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System, the backbone of electronic payments in the country. For customers, this translates to faster transaction settlement times and a regulated layer of protection for funds held on the platform.
Until now, Sycamore operated primarily as a lending platform licensed by the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, alongside an asset management arm licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
