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Various reforms have been brought to bear on the financial system ostensibly to improve the country's macroeconomic variables and the standard of living of the people, among which are the financial reforms that were implemented in recent times. This study examines the impact of financial sector reform on the Human Development Index (HDI) following the recent statistics that show improvement in the HDI of Nigeria since 2005. The study employed several variables as a proxy for financial reforms and adopted the Granger causality test and vector error correction model to analyse the impact of the relationship for the period between 1980 and 2017. The findings revealed a negative long-run relationship between financial sector reform variables and HDI, except for owners' equity. The study also showed positive short-run dynamics between total savings to GDP and HDI. The study concluded that the recent improvements in HDI, which is the proxy for economic development, are not due to the financial sector's reforms; rather, some other influences in the economy could be responsible. The study, therefore, recommends a more inclusive reform agenda that will focus on economic development rather than economic growth.

Microfinance banks were established to provide diversified, affordable, and dependable financial services to the active poor that would enable them to undertake and develop long-term, sustainable entrepreneurial activities to create employment opportunities, increase their productivity, and thereby increase household's income and standard of living. This chapter employed ordinary least square and vector error correction estimation techniques to establish the contribution and long-run relationship of microfinance to entrepreneurship development in Nigeria for the period 1992-2015. The result shows that a positive significant relationship exists between microfinance gross loan portfolio, total deposit liability, and entrepreneurship proxied by number of newly registered business, while a negative significant relationship exists between microfinance bank asset and entrepreneurship. This therefore suggests that availability of loanable funds for micro and small-scale enterprises provided significant support for entrepreneurship development in Nigeria. The result also shows that a long-run relationship exists between microfinance variables and entrepreneurship in Nigeria. The study therefore recommends that microfinance banks should improve on the quality of their asset by reducing non-performing loans.