Coronation Merchant Bank
“Can a Nigerian merchant bank scale into Africa's premier investment bank by combining traditional DCM/M&A leadership with an API-driven digital banking layer?”
Coronation Merchant Bank was founded in 2015 to fill a gap in Nigeria's long-underserved merchant banking segment, focusing on long-term capital across investment banking, corporate banking, private banking/wealth management and global markets/treasury. Over its first decade it has emphasized traditional merchant/investment banking — DCM, M&A advisory, trade finance, treasury — rather than retail neobanking or embedded finance rails. Recent thought leadership (2025 podcasts on API architecture, API monetization with Interswitch, financial inclusion) signals early strategic interest in API-led digital banking, but the company remains primarily a wholesale/institutional bank rather than an embedded finance platform.