Project detail - First City Monument Bank Limited - Nasira Portfolio

Who is our customer?

First City Monument Bank Limited (‘FCMB’ or ‘the Bank’) (Fitch: B-, Moody's: Caa1) is a Tier II commercial bank with headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria. It was founded in 1977 as a brokerage company before gaining a banking license in 1983. FCMB is the primary subsidiary (93.7% of TA as of Q3 2022) of the FCMB Group Plc (the “Group”), a full-service banking group listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. The bank provides a wide range of banking and financial services via its six main business segments: Personal, Institutional, SME (small- and medium-sized enterprise), Commercial, Corporate, and Treasury & Financial Markets. The Bank is transitioning from a corporate bank into a universal bank, including expansion into the SME and retail segments. Its 2021-2025 strategy seeks to intensify the acquisition and retention of active customers (i.e., from 7.6m to 25m customers). FCMB has been a client of FMO since 2014, when FMO arranged a six-year USD 60m syndicated facility. In 2019, FMO arranged a USD 50m subordinated debt facility. Currently, FCMB is in the process of obtaining a USD 60m syndicated senior facility, of which FMO provides up to USD 20m; EFP up to USD 30m, and USD 10m to be provided by FIM funds. In addition, a USD 25m NASIRA facility is being offered to FCMB to support entering into the underserved SME segments, including women-owned and rural MSMEs.

What is our funding objective?

FMO has awarded a EUR 51,000 grant to FCMB to support the implementation of its Investment Readiness 2025 program. It is a six-month initiative designed to prepare 10 high-potential agricultural technology (agritech) startups in Nigeria for investment. Through a structured combination of virtual and onsite learning, expert coaching, and personalized diagnostics, the program aims to enhance each participant’s financial literacy, business model strength, and credit readiness. Weekly activities include e-learning modules, live sessions, peer-to-peer learning, networking sessions, and office hours, culminating in a Demo Day where top-performing businesses pitch to development finance institutions (DFIs), venture capitalists, and FCMB. The core funding objective of the program is to unlock access to capital for underserved yet promising agritech ventures. By leveraging alternative credit scoring, concessional funding, and a capacity-building trajectory, the program intends to identify and support businesses that demonstrate strong potential but lack collateral and/or credit history. Loans and grants will be awarded based on the scalability and performance during the investment readiness program, with a NGN 20 million (~ EUR 11,000) grant prize reserved for the top-performing startups. The ultimate goal is to pave the way for the program beneficiaries to fundraise and enable their scalability to deliver impact across Nigeria’s agricultural value chains.

Why do we fund this investment?

The proposed 2025 FCMB Agritech Investment Readiness Program is a strong fit for the Nasira Technical Assistance Facility (TAF) mandate, which aims to address barriers that prevent financial institutions from serving underserved entrepreneurs, particularly youth, women, and migrants. The program tackles a critical market gap in early-stage agritech financing and capacity building in Nigeria. These ventures often lack the track record or collateral to access commercial funding, and Nasira TAF is designed to fill precisely this kind of gap. Furthermore, the program targets scalable, impact-driven agritech startups that improve smallholder productivity, resilience, and financial inclusion, core priorities for FMO and Nasira. It also emphasizes outreach to youth-led ventures, aligning with Nasira’s inclusive development goals. Lastly, the project reinforces FMO’s partnership with FCMB, a committed local financial institution already engaged under the Nasira guarantee facility. The technical assistance project complements the guarantee by building a stronger pipeline of investable opportunities. This is also well interconnected with the credit line of USD 50 mln that FMO is currently negotiating with FCMB.

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