JPMorgan Parks N50bn at the CBN for a Nigerian Licence

JPMorgan Chase has deposited N50 billion, about $38 million, with the Central Bank of Nigeria as it seeks a licence to run a merchant bank in the country, Bloomberg reported on 20 October. The people who described the deposit spoke anonymously because the licensing process is private. They called it one of the final regulatory requirements in the application.

The figure is not arbitrary. Under the recapitalisation rules the CBN set out in 2024, a merchant bank must hold at least N50 billion of capital, up from N15 billion, and applicants place that capital in an account at the central bank. The deposit does not guarantee a licence: the CBN still has to decide.

From a representative office to a bank

JPMorgan already works in Nigeria through a representative office in Lagos, which serves clients of its commercial and investment banking and asset and wealth management businesses. A representative office cannot take deposits or lend. A merchant banking licence would let it do regulated banking business in Nigeria, such as lending to companies, rather than only advising them from Lagos.

The plan has been public for weeks. On 8 October, Dapo Olagunji, managing director of J.P. Morgan West Africa, said at the Nigeria–Asia Financial Connectivity Dialogue in Singapore, which the CBN convened with JPMorgan, Nigerian Exchange Group and FMDQ, that the bank intends to open a merchant bank before the end of 2026, subject to approval. According to Bloomberg's sources, it now hopes for a licence by the end of the year or early 2027.

Why it matters

• It is a bet by a global bank on Nigeria's market, arriving after the foreign-exchange reforms and a bank recapitalisation that 33 banks had met by the CBN's 31 March 2026 deadline.
• Merchant banks serve companies and governments, not retail customers, so the immediate competition is for corporate lending, trade finance and capital-markets work, not current accounts.
• It follows Nigeria's return to JPMorgan's bond indexes: the country was added to the new GBI-EM Edge index in September with a 7.4% weighting, about 11 years after it was removed from the GBI-EM in 2015.