₦64.55bn in hand: Abbey Bank sets November start for commercial banking

Abbey Bank went looking for ₦50 billion and came back with ₦64.55 billion. Now the lender, which spent more than three decades as Abbey Mortgage Bank, says it will open for business as a commercial bank in November.

That surplus matters. The private placement priced 26.56 billion new shares at ₦2.43 each, lifting the share count from about 10.15 billion to 36.72 billion, roughly 3.6 times larger. Put another way, about 72% of the shares now in issue were created this year. Five investors, CardinalStone Asset Management among them, hold about 72.35% between them.

A regional bank first

The capital clears the ₦50 billion bar for a regional banking licence by about 29%, and management says that is enough for now. The Central Bank of Nigeria cleared the conversion in June. A national licence is a longer play, perhaps two to three years out, which would need a much bigger balance sheet.

The bank starts small: eight branches, with more to follow only as customers arrive. Managing director and chief executive Mobolaji Adewunmi and his team are pitching the switch as an extension of what Abbey already knows rather than a reinvention. Housing stays at the centre. Construction finance, infrastructure projects and loans to property developers sit alongside home improvement and phased-development products, while SMEs get collections, POS services and new credit lines from the digital team.

The numbers to beat

Abbey was growing before the change. Pre-tax profit reached ₦3.12 billion in 2025, about 2.6 times the ₦1.22 billion of 2024. But management concedes customer loans have slipped recently as the mortgage book gives way to the new model, and it has not said by how much. Reversing that dip is the first test.

The harder one is crowded ground. Commercial lending to SMEs and builders is where every bank and fintech in Lagos is hunting, and Abbey's pitch is faster decisions plus deeper knowledge of the housing chain. With more than three and a half times as many shares in issue, investors will also want returns that keep pace with a far bigger capital base, and ₦3.12 billion of profit spread across 36.7 billion shares is a thin starting point.

For Nigerian homebuyers and developers, a bank that has lived inside the mortgage market for 30 years could mean credit that understands long project cycles. That is the promise, and it is a reasonable one.

Abbey has the capital and the licence in hand; whether a November launch with eight branches can turn a mortgage specialist into a growing commercial lender, and reverse its loan dip, is what its first few quarterly results will show.