Ten billion naira is a rounding error for a tier-one bank. For a Lagos lender that only switched on its loan book three years ago and lends to micro-businesses most banks will not touch, it is a real milestone.
Regxta says it has now disbursed ₦10 billion across more than 100,000 loans to 35,000 customers since its platform went live in October 2023. It currently lends more than ₦650 million a month through over 4,000 loans.
The pace is the story
Spread ₦10 billion evenly over the roughly 36 months since launch and you get about ₦278 million a month. The current run rate of ₦650 million is more than double that average, which tells you most of the growth has come recently. Annualise today's pace and the company would be writing close to ₦7.8 billion a year, so the next ₦10 billion could arrive in well under half the time the first one took.
Ticket sizes are creeping up too. Lifetime, the average loan works out to about ₦100,000 at most. This month's figures imply something nearer ₦160,000 per loan. Some of that is inflation doing its usual work on naira figures, but it also suggests borrowers are graduating to bigger facilities.
Then there is repeat business. With 100,000 loans across 35,000 customers, the typical borrower has come back about three times. In micro-lending that is the number that matters most, because a customer who repays and returns is far cheaper to serve than a new one.
What the data model has to prove
Regxta scores applicants using alternative data rather than the formal credit histories most of its customers simply do not have. The company was one of four Nigerian startups picked for Google's Accelerator Africa cohort earlier this year on the strength of that approach, which pairs the scoring engine with a network of field agents.
Its chief technology officer, Moses Obika, frames the work around watching the portfolio in real time. That matters, because the figure Regxta has not shared is the one investors will ask about first: how much of the ₦10 billion came back. Disbursement is the easy half of lending. Collections, in a market where small businesses run on thin margins, are the hard half.
Regxta is lending faster than ever and customers keep returning, but until it publishes repayment and default figures, ₦10 billion measures reach, not quality.
Figures are as reported at the time of writing. STATART news is written by Frank Brother (Markets), Christina Amgbari (Insights) and Ebipadei Joseph (Lifestyle), and checked before publication.