Afrinvest West Africa has rebranded its investment platform from Optimus to PlutusNeo, positioning the app for expansion as the firm projects Nigeria’s equities market could reach N140tn in 2026.
The Group Managing Director, Ike Chioke, announced the rebranding during an interview on Channels Television’s Business Morning, describing PlutusNeo by Afrinvest as a comprehensive platform that aggregates the company’s securities trading, asset management and investment research capabilities.
“PlutusNeo is a new entrant in the market. It used to be called Optimus by Afrinvest, but we renamed it because we are positioning it for greater growth,” Chioke said.
According to him, the newly rebranded PlutusNeo offers users access to multiple investment opportunities through a single digital interface.
Customers can trade Nigerian stocks via Afrinvestor, access United States stocks through a partnership with DriveWealth, and earn double-digit returns on savings through asset management accounts.
“With PlutusNeo by Afrinvest, you can click to trade Nigerian stocks, which takes you to Afrinvestor. You can click to trade U.S. stocks, and it takes you to another window driven by DriveWealth, our partner in America,” he explained.
Chioke said the platform treats deposits as asset management accounts rather than ordinary savings, automatically generating returns for users. Customers can also lock funds for specific periods to earn higher returns.
He added that Afrinvest is developing partnerships to integrate banking, payments and lending services into PlutusNeo, further expanding the platform’s capabilities beyond trading and savings.
The rebranding, he noted, reflects Afrinvest’s commitment to research-driven investment, ensuring that all products and recommendations are backed by fundamental analysis.
“Afrinvest has always been a research-driven firm, ensuring that anything we put out is supported by fundamental research,” Chioke stated.
The company’s digital transformation, he said, has delivered impressive results, with customer numbers growing from fewer than 20,000 weekly users during the phone-based trading era to over 200,000 customers trading online.
“In the past, when customers called us to execute trades, we were dealing with fewer than 20,000 customers weekly. Today, we manage over 200,000 customers trading online, and this number continues to grow. We are onboarding about 5,000 to 10,000 customers weekly,” he said.
The Afrinvest boss explained that some of the issues Nigeria faced when the market collapsed were related to transparency, noting that investors needed to see their purchased shares instantly in their accounts. He said the system is now fully digital, connected to trading apps, the Nigerian Exchange Limited and the Central Securities Clearing System, ensuring immediate visibility of transactions.
Beyond the rebranding, Afrinvest projects that the Nigerian equities market could appreciate by 40 per cent in 2026, reaching N140tn from the historic N100trn milestone achieved in 2025. In an upside scenario, Chioke predicted the market could surge by as much as 80 per cent to N200tn.
The bullish outlook, he said, follows a strong 2025 performance in which the market delivered returns of over 50 per cent. “Many companies recorded gains of 50 per cent, 75 per cent and even 80 per cent. A few, I know, delivered returns of up to 300 per cent,” he disclosed.
Improving macroeconomic fundamentals, Chioke said, underpin Afrinvest’s positive outlook for the economy. He noted that Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product grew by 3.9 per cent in 2025, while Afrinvest Research projects growth of 4.3 per cent in 2026, reflecting what he described as constructive momentum.
He attributed the improving environment partly to actions by the Central Bank of Nigeria, which he said stabilised the foreign exchange market, lifted external reserves to about $45.6bn, and narrowed the gap between the official and parallel markets to less than one per cent through the introduction of the electronic foreign exchange matching system.
Although the Monetary Policy Rate remains elevated at 27 per cent, Chioke said conditions are increasingly favourable for monetary easing, citing a more dovish stance among global central banks and the potential for rate cuts of between 200 and 300 basis points.
He added that interest rates are expected to moderate from the 19 to 22 per cent yield environment seen in 2025 to about 16 to 19 per cent in 2026, a shift he said would lower borrowing costs, enable manufacturers and businesses to expand operations, create jobs and ultimately strengthen corporate earnings.
Chioke identified several headwinds that could undermine market performance, including geopolitical tensions. He warned that potential United States tariffs under the President Donald Trump administration could pose risks to Nigeria’s export opportunities.
“When elephants are fighting, you can get trampled and they call it collateral damage,” he said, stressing the need for strategic diplomacy with major global powers.
He also cautioned that the 2026 pre-election year could present governance challenges, as heightened political activities may slow decision-making and delay critical economic reforms.
In addition, Chioke noted that insecurity remains a persistent risk, warning that rising global gold prices could worsen banditry in mining areas such as Zamfara State, as higher prices may incentivise increased illegal mining and related criminal activity.
As retail investors increasingly embrace digital trading platforms, Chioke cautioned against speculative behaviour driven by social media hype, including claims of companies delivering returns of 400 per cent or even 1,300 per cent.
“Investors should use platforms backed by institutions they can trust, particularly those with strong research support,” he advised, noting that PlutusNeo provides price history analysis and fundamental research through Afrinvest consultants.
He emphasised the importance of understanding price-to-earnings ratios and underlying fundamentals before making investment decisions, explaining that a N20 stock earning N10 has a price-to-earnings multiple of two, while a N10 stock earning N1 has a multiple of 10, meaning it could take significantly longer for investors to recover their capital.
Chioke added that investors should look beyond headline prices to assess earnings strength, valuation metrics and the quality of the business, stressing that a low-priced stock does not necessarily represent good value.
Beyond oil, he argued that Nigeria is underutilising high-value sectors such as entertainment, tourism and technology, noting that Nollywood and the music industry could generate more sustainable earnings than crude oil if properly structured.
“With the youth population we have, outsourced digital work, technology and tourism present huge opportunities, but they require investments in infrastructure, education, healthcare and broadband,” he said.
The rebranding of Afrinvest’s investment platform to PlutusNeo signals the company’s ambition to capture a larger share of Nigeria’s rapidly digitising investment landscape, as improved market infrastructure and transparency continue to attract unprecedented numbers of retail investors.
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