This research work is set out to examine the determinants of financial development in Nigeria over the period of 1981 to 2016. Autoregressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) model was employed to estimate the influences of institutions, inflation, interest rate, debt service, foreign direct investment, economic growth, quality of life, government expenditure, trade openness, and quality of human capital on financial development based on the theoretical underpinnings and related empirical literature on financial development. The result revealed that there is an evidence of cointegration among the variables under investigation. However, the results revealed that quality of life, foreign direct investment, and debt service had positive impact on financial development while inflation, economic growth, government expenditure, and trade openness have negative impact on financial development throughout the study period. More so, the nature of relationship between financial development and institutions is found to be staristically insignificant. The study concluded that the most important determinants of financial development in Nigeria over the study period are quality of life and debt services