The 2025 African Financial Industry Barometer has indicated that the sector is entering a phase of strategic consolidation, just as the hype around the fintech subsector appears to be cooling, meaning the players in the sector need to show economic viability.

The report, which was the result of collaboration between Deloitte and the Africa Financial Summit, was based on interviews with senior executives from more than 70 financial institutions across Africa.

According to the report, the shift in the fintech space saw institutions pivot away from rapid expansion toward a mandate for long-term “profitability and operational efficiency”.

For years, fintech companies were the primary drivers of excitement and digital transformation across the continent. However, the latest data reveals a more “subdued” outlook as these firms enter a phase of “demonstrating economic viability”.

The barometer indicates that fintech confidence has adjusted downward to 8.33 out of 10, a notable decline from its 9.25 peak in 2023. “Industry confidence is back at its highest level, buoyed by disinflation and restored operational visibility.

The sector is turning its attention to fundamentals, with profitability, cybersecurity, and efficiency becoming the three strategic priorities. Fintechs, previously highly confident in their financial outlook, are now more subdued, demonstrating that now is the time for them to show economic viability.”

While fintechs remain pioneers in digital excellence, they are now under intense pressure to prove they can generate consistent returns in a tightening economic environment.

The report indicated that while the transition from “expansion to execution” suggests that the initial fintech gold rush may be stabilising, the African financial sector is becoming more resilient.

As the financial sector matures and the fintech hype cools, the gaze of stakeholders has turned towards a more ominous threat, cybersecurity, which has officially been “confirmed as a systemic issue” and is now the “primary concern for institutions”, with 51 per cent of firms flagging it as their main worry, a 12-point increase in just one year.

The report stated, “Cybersecurity is confirmed as a systemic issue: the primary concern for institutions (51 per cent, +12 pts) and the top regulatory priority (97 per cent); it calls for a strengthening of response capabilities beyond detection.”

Despite the high priority placed on digital safety, a “strategic paradox” has emerged within the continent’s leading firms. While 70 per cent of institutions have successfully deployed fully operational “detection” systems, such as monitoring and alerts, their ability to actually “respond” to and recover from an attack lags behind at 65 per cent. This asymmetry creates a dangerous bottleneck where “teams detect incidents quickly but lack automated containment procedures” or standardised playbooks. The report warns that without tested failover procedures and rapid reconstruction capabilities, “every compromise becomes existential”.

Supporting this continental trend, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of NIBSS Plc, Mr Premier Oiwoh, recently highlighted in a technical session that digital payments fraud has grown in “scale, speed, and sophistication.” The data that he presented revealed that while the total amount lost to fraud in Nigeria dropped from a massive N52.26 bn in 2024 to N25.85 bn in 2025, the nature of the threat is fundamentally changing.

Oiwoh identified “social engineering” as the “dominant systemic threat by volume and value”, noting that fraud risk is now driven more by “human manipulation rather than technical system compromise”. This is particularly evident in Internet Banking, which Oiwoh described as a “low volume yet high value target” that resulted in the largest financial losses across the board in 2025.

This “human element” complicates the industry’s recovery efforts. Oiwoh reported that the number of Nigerian institutions reporting fraud incidents fell from 45 in mid-2024 to just 34 by late 2025. He warned that this “decline in reporting institutions signals potential underreporting”, which could undermine the entire ecosystem’s safety.