Recovering ₦2.57 Million From a 90+ DPD Asset Finance and BNPL Portfolio

A Nigerian asset finance and Buy Now, Pay Later lender deployed VIDA Recovery across 

Within the first five months, VIDA Recovery returned 

 to the lender. Recovery efforts remain ongoing across the outstanding portfolio.

The lender was managing more than 500 asset finance and BNPL loans that had already moved beyond 90 days past due.

 remained tied up in delinquent accounts. The commercial priority was to recover as much of that capital as possible and return it to the business.

VIDA Recovery was deployed to work the portfolio at scale and maintain recovery activity across the outstanding accounts.

The lender uploaded the delinquent portfolio into VIDA Recovery using borrower information and existing repayment mandates.

VIDA Recovery carried out automated and manual recovery attempts across the portfolio while tracking recovered amounts, outstanding balances and fully settled loans.

Where the same borrower had multiple facilities, the accounts could be managed under one borrower profile, giving the lender a clearer view of total exposure during recovery.

Within the first five months, VIDA Recovery recovered 

The recoveries reduced the outstanding balance from 

The programme remains active, with recovery efforts continuing across the remaining accounts.

The value of the programme lies in capital returned from loans that had already remained unpaid beyond 90 days.

Within five months, VIDA Recovery returned more than 

 to the lender, generated successful recovery activity across 85 accounts and fully resolved 13 loans.

As recovery continues, additional payments will add to the amount already returned from the portfolio.

Recover More From Delinquent Loan Portfolios

VIDA Recovery helps financial institutions recover capital from overdue asset finance, BNPL, salary-backed, consumer and SME loans using existing borrower repayment mandates.

Contact VeendHQ to discuss recovering your delinquent loan portfolio.

 See how VIDA Recovery helped an asset finance and BNPL lender recover ₦2.57 million from 544 loans already beyond 90 days past due.

Asset Finance Loan Recovery Case Study | VIDA Recovery

Recovering Capital From High-Value Loans Beyond 90 Days Past Due

A Nigerian lender offering salary-backed and SME loans selected nine high-value delinquent accounts for an initial VIDA Recovery pilot.

 in outstanding loans, with an average exposure of approximately 

. Every loan had already remained unpaid for more than 90 days before entering the pilot.

Within the first four months, VIDA Recovery recovered 

 from four of the nine accounts. The pilot remains active, with recovery efforts continuing across the outstanding balance.

The lender entered the pilot with a concentrated portfolio of nine high-value loans that had already crossed 90 days past due.

At this stage of delinquency, the immediate challenge was not simply to manage the accounts. It was to return capital from loans that had stopped producing repayments.

The lender deployed VIDA Recovery to pursue recoveries across the selected accounts and test how much value could be returned from the portfolio.

The accounts were uploaded into VIDA Recovery using borrower information and existing repayment mandates supplied by the lender.

VIDA Recovery carried out automated and manual recovery attempts across the pilot portfolio while tracking recovered amounts and outstanding balances on each account.

During the first four months, VIDA Recovery returned 

, meaning repayment activity was achieved across nearly half of a portfolio that had already remained unpaid for more than 90 days.

The recoveries reduced the outstanding balance to 

No account has yet reached full settlement, and the pilot remains active. Recovery efforts continue across the outstanding accounts, making the current result a progress milestone rather than the final outcome.

The value of the pilot lies in capital returned from a small, concentrated pool of deeply delinquent, high-value loans.

Within four months, VIDA Recovery recovered funds from nearly half of the accounts and returned 

 to the lender from loans that had already stopped paying before deployment.

As the pilot continues, further recoveries will add to the amount returned from the outstanding portfolio.

VIDA Recovery helps financial institutions recover capital from overdue consumer, salary-backed and SME loans using existing borrower repayment mandates.

 See how VIDA Recovery recovered ₦1.59 million and restored repayment activity across four of nine salary loans already at 90+ DPD.

 Salary Loan Recovery Case Study | VIDA Recovery

The 26.5% Margin Trap: Why Loan Growth Can Become Bad Growth for Nigerian Lenders

With the CBN holding rates again, lenders can no longer assume that cheaper capital will rescue weak product economics

In February 2026, the Central Bank of Nigeria cut the Monetary Policy Rate by 50 basis points, from 27% to 26.5%.

For lenders, it was easy to read that as the beginning of a broader easing cycle.

Five months later, that assumption looks much less comfortable.

At its 306th Monetary Policy Committee meeting on July 20 and 21, the CBN retained the MPR at 

 for the second consecutive meeting. It also kept the Cash Reserve Requirement at 

, 16% for merchant banks and 75% for non-TSA public-sector deposits. All 11 members attended, and the Committee voted unanimously to leave the policy parameters unchanged.

The decision came even as headline inflation eased slightly to 

, from 15.93% in May. Governor Olayemi Cardoso said renewed geopolitical uncertainty and the potential pass-through from higher global energy prices justified maintaining a cautious stance.

For lending businesses, the signal is straightforward.

Do not build the economics of the second half of 2026 around the assumption that capital will suddenly become cheap.

That matters because in a high-rate environment, growth can become deceptive.

A lender can disburse more loans, acquire more customers and report a larger portfolio while quietly weakening the economics underneath the business.

Disbursement is not the same thing as profitable growth

Credit businesses naturally celebrate volume.

Those numbers matter. But they become dangerous when they are treated as proof that a lending business is getting stronger.

Every naira disbursed has to earn enough to cover several costs before it creates value.

There is the cost of obtaining the capital itself. There are origination and servicing expenses. There are expected credit losses. There is the cost of collections when repayment deteriorates. For regulated institutions, there are also liquidity and capital constraints that influence how much of the balance sheet can actually be deployed.

If those costs rise faster than the return generated by a loan product, increasing volume amplifies the problem rather than solving it.

A lender can grow revenue while the economic value of each new loan declines.

That distinction becomes more important when monetary conditions stay tight.

The February rate cut has not translated into cheap credit

The MPR is not the direct funding cost of every lender.

Banks fund themselves through deposits and other liabilities. Finance companies and digital lenders may rely on shareholder capital, institutional facilities, commercial paper, warehouse structures or other forms of debt. Each lender has a different funding mix.

But monetary policy sets the environment in which those funding sources are priced.

The average maximum lending rate in Nigerian banks was 

, down from 34.78% in May but still well above the 

. The rate actually climbed to 35.17% in February and remained around that level through April, despite the CBN's February rate cut.

Corporate funding outside conventional bank loans is not cheap either. Earlier in 2026, disclosed commercial-paper issues were offering roughly 

, with an average around 22.5%, as issuers competed with attractive fixed-income alternatives for investor capital.

The implication for lenders is not that every institution faces the same cost of funds.

capital remains expensive enough that weak lending economics have very little room to hide.

A high-volume product can be the wrong product

Product A generates strong demand, converts easily and can be disbursed at scale. But its margins are thin, customer acquisition is expensive, defaults are meaningful and repayment takes several months.

Product B grows more slowly. Its customers require more verification, but repayment is more predictable, tenor is shorter or security is stronger, and losses are materially lower.

In an environment where funding costs are falling quickly, a lender might tolerate weaker margins in Product A while expecting cheaper refinancing and scale efficiencies to improve the economics later.

At 26.5%, that assumption becomes much more dangerous.

A lender funding an expensive long-duration asset with expensive or repricing liabilities can find its spread compressed for months. Add higher-than-expected losses and a seemingly successful product begins consuming capital without generating an adequate return.

This is why the current policy environment should force lenders to look beyond the headline interest rate charged to customers.

A 40% loan is not automatically more profitable than a 28% loan.

The first may carry substantially higher defaults, acquisition costs and collection expenses. The second may turn faster, cost less to originate and produce a stronger return after losses.

The number that matters is not simply yield.

risk-adjusted margin after the full cost of producing and funding the loan.

Product mix is now a balance-sheet decision

This is where risk teams, finance teams and product teams need to stop operating as separate conversations.

Credit may see an acceptable approval rate.

Finance may see a different picture entirely once the cost of capital, tenor and expected losses are included.

A product that looks attractive at the customer level can be unattractive at the portfolio level.

That means lenders should be asking harder questions about where each additional naira should go.

Which products have the strongest repayment control?

Which segments maintain acceptable losses even when the economy weakens?

Which products can be repriced when funding conditions change?

Which facilities lock the lender into long tenors without enough compensation?

Which loan types consume operational and collection resources that the headline margin never reflects?

These questions do not automatically lead every lender to the same answer.

For one institution, a salary-linked product with reliable payroll repayment may produce attractive economics.

For another, secured asset finance may offer a better balance between yield and loss severity.

A specialist SME lender may find short working-capital facilities more attractive than longer unsecured exposures because the capital turns several times within the same year.

The point is not that one product category is universally superior.

the product mix has to reflect the price of capital.

Cheap customer acquisition can hide expensive lending

This also changes how lenders should think about growth marketing.

A lending product can generate thousands of applications at a very low cost per lead and still be economically poor.

If those customers enter a loan book with weak margins, high expected losses or long capital lock-up periods, efficient acquisition simply accelerates the accumulation of unattractive assets.

That makes the relationship between marketing and risk increasingly important.

The cheapest borrower to acquire is not necessarily the most valuable borrower to finance.

And the product with the highest approval volume is not necessarily the product that deserves the most capital.

In a high-cost environment, growth teams should know more than conversion rates.

They should know which products are producing sufficient contribution after funding, losses and servicing costs.

Otherwise, a lender can optimise every stage of the funnel while optimising the business towards lower profitability.

The 45% CRR makes capital efficiency harder to ignore

For deposit money banks, the pressure is even more visible.

, meaning the liquidity environment remains deliberately tight. The requirement does not apply in the same way to non-bank digital lenders, but it matters to the broader financial system from which many lenders ultimately obtain funding.

Combined with an MPR of 26.5%, the policy stance reinforces a simple reality: deployable capital remains valuable.

That makes capital efficiency a competitive issue.

A lender that can produce the same risk-adjusted income while committing less capital for a shorter period has more flexibility than one whose balance sheet is tied up in long, low-margin exposures.

Even the speed at which recovered funds can be recycled into another performing asset matters.

They are not simply credit-policy variables.

They determine what a lending business can earn from a finite pool of capital.

The right growth KPI changes when money is expensive

For years, fintech lending has been associated with scale.

Those remain important operating metrics, but the current environment makes them incomplete measures of performance.

How much sustainable margin does each naira of capital create after the real cost of risk?

That is a different way to think about growth.

A ₦10 billion portfolio can be worse than a ₦7 billion portfolio if the larger book carries weaker spreads, longer duration and heavier losses.

A product generating 100,000 loans can destroy more value than one generating 20,000.

With Nigeria's MPR at 26.5%, loan growth alone isn't enough. Learn why lenders must prioritize risk-adjusted margins, capital efficiency, and smarter product mix.

Recovering ₦84.09 Million From a 90+ DPD Salary Loan Portfolio

A Nigerian salary lender deployed VIDA Recovery across 

Over the first 12 months, VIDA Recovery returned 

Recovery remains ongoing across the outstanding balance.

 accounts with at least one successful recovery

The lender was managing thousands of salary loans that had already moved beyond 90 days past due.

At this stage, the issue was no longer routine repayment follow-up. More than 

 remained tied up across a large ageing portfolio, and the lender needed to recover as much of that capital as possible.

VIDA Recovery carried out automated and manual recovery attempts across the accounts while tracking recovered amounts, outstanding balances and fully settled loans.

Within the first 12 months, VIDA Recovery recovered 

 of all loans uploaded had been completely settled.

The programme remains active, with recovery efforts continuing across the remaining outstanding accounts.

The results show that loans crossing 90 days past due do not automatically become unrecoverable.

 to the lender from an ageing salary loan portfolio, restored repayment activity across more than half of the uploaded accounts and fully resolved nearly 2,000 loans.

As recovery continues, additional payments will add to the capital already returned.

VIDA Recovery helps financial institutions recover capital from overdue salary-backed, consumer and SME loans using existing borrower repayment mandates.

See how VIDA Recovery helped a payday lender recover ₦84.09 million from 5,551 loans already at 90+ days past due.

Payday Loan Recovery Case Study | VIDA Recovery

Why a borrower can look healthy in your system while deteriorating somewhere else

A borrower can be one of your best customers and still be a bad credit decision today.

Imagine a customer who has taken four loans from the same lender and repaid every one on time. Their repayment history is clean. Their internal score is strong. They qualify for a higher limit, and nothing in the lender's own records suggests otherwise.

Now imagine that since their last loan, the same customer has taken on significant debt elsewhere. One facility is already non-performing. Another was opened recently. Their total monthly obligations have risen substantially.

Inside the first lender's system, this is still a good customer.

Across the credit system, it may be a very different borrower.

Nothing in the lender's data is necessarily wrong.

That distinction sits at the heart of a recent Central Bank of Nigeria directive, and it raises a much bigger question about how lenders should think about creditworthiness.

A default somewhere else now matters here

On March 12, 2026, the CBN directed banks to deny additional credit to large-ticket obligors with non-performing facilities recorded in the Credit Risk Management System (CRMS) or a licensed private credit bureau.

The restriction goes beyond conventional loans. It covers facilities that could create additional exposure, including letters of credit, performance bonds and advance payment guarantees.

The directive is specifically aimed at large borrowers whose exposures could pose material risks to individual banks or the wider financial system. It also reinforces an earlier CBN circular that prohibited loan defaulters from further access to credit facilities in the banking system, so the regulator's direction of travel here is not new.

So this is not a blanket rule for every Nigerian borrower, and it should not be presented as one.

But the logic behind it extends well beyond large corporate credit:

A lender's experience with a borrower is not the same thing as the borrower's complete credit position.

In practice, it changes how credit should be assessed.

Performing with you does not mean performing everywhere

The CBN created the CRMS because Nigeria has dealt with this problem before.

In explaining the history of the system, the CBN describes borrowers who would leave unpaid obligations at one bank and obtain new facilities from another. Bilateral enquiries between banks were often slow, incomplete or unreliable, leaving institutions without a consolidated view of what borrowers already owed.

The result was predictable: lenders sometimes continued extending credit to customers who already had significant unserviced debts elsewhere.

One stated objective of the CRMS is particularly important. The CBN says consolidated information allows the regulator and banks to see a customer's global debt profile, helping to avoid situations where the same borrower is effectively treated as performing in one institution while being classified as doubtful or lost in another.

That is the real insight behind the current directive.

Credit performance can be local. Credit risk is not.

And when lenders confuse those two things, good repayment history can create a false sense of security.

Your own data can tell the truth and still lead you to the wrong decision

A lender should know whether a customer pays on time, how frequently they borrow, how they use a product, whether their income into an account has changed and how they have behaved through previous credit cycles.

The problem begins when that information is treated as a complete picture of creditworthiness.

Because your system mostly sees what happens between the borrower and you.

It may not immediately tell you that the borrower has accumulated new obligations elsewhere.

It may not tell you that another facility has deteriorated.

It may not tell you that a customer who comfortably serviced ₦200,000 in monthly obligations six months ago is now carrying ₦500,000.

And crucially, your own repayment data may be one of the last places that deterioration becomes visible.

A borrower does not become risky on the day they first miss a payment to you.

Their financial position may have been weakening long before that.

This creates a dangerous lag in credit decisioning.

By the time the deterioration appears in your own repayment ledger, you may already have increased the customer's limit, issued a top-up or approved another facility based on a version of the borrower that no longer exists.

The risk can be highest when the lender feels most confident

This becomes particularly interesting with repeat borrowers.

A new customer naturally attracts scrutiny. The lender knows relatively little about them, so verification and underwriting tend to matter.

A customer who has successfully repaid several loans feels different. They have earned trust.

That trust has real value. Previous repayment behavior should absolutely influence future credit decisions.

But previous repayment should be evidence, not automatic permission to lend again.

Because something important can happen between Loan Four and Loan Five: the borrower can change.

Their income can change. Their obligations can change. Their business cash flow can change. Their exposure to other lenders can change.

Their previous loans tell you how they handled previous obligations. They do not, by themselves, tell you whether the borrower can absorb another obligation now.

That means one of the easiest lending decisions to automate, the repeat loan to a historically good customer, can also contain an overlooked risk: relationship confidence can outlive current creditworthiness.

"Given everything we know today, are they still a good borrower for this amount?"

Those are not the same underwriting question.

In a stressed credit environment, that gap becomes more expensive

This problem matters even more when credit conditions are deteriorating.

S&P Global Ratings estimates that Nigerian banks' non-performing loan ratio rose from under 5% in 2024 to about 7% in 2025 following the end of regulatory forbearance on several large exposures, taking it above the 5% regulatory threshold. It expects NPLs to remain elevated at roughly 6% to 7% through 2026.

Learn why lenders need real-time borrower visibility beyond internal repayment history to make better credit decisions.

The Vida Blog

Experience the power of Vida today!