Awards for Excellence 2020
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Kenya’s Equity Bank stands out for its digital offering, and is poised to take advantage of the coronavirus-fuelled pivot towards cashless banking.
Kenya is already a leader in digital banking, with over 30 million people using mobile money services last year. The success of Safaricom’s M-Pesa app has dramatically increased financial inclusion across the country, highlighting how banks must be innovative and highly digitalized to serve the needs of the population.
Equity Bank has long been a leader in digital banking services: in 2019, over 97% of its transactions were done outside branches; 79% via mobile and 11% via agency.
“The objective of the bank is to transform lives and livelihoods, and being in three additional countries would add that. But we can still achieve that by deepening in countries we [operate in],” says chief executive James Mwangi. “If you look at Kenya during the interest cap period, we increased our market share from 11% to 13% which is a significant deepening.
“Covid has become a catalyst for digitalization. Now close to 98% of our transactions happen outside the bank – we are becoming a virtual bank.”
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James Mwangi |
Its EazzyApp reached more than 680,000 downloads in 2019. A total of 321.5 million transactions worth $159.1 billion were transacted through the app through the year, representing growth of 24% and 27% respectively year on year.
Equity’s customer base grew 9% in 2019, something the bank attributes to integration of its Eazzy Banking products with telecoms providers. It reports a growth in deposits to $3.8 billion at the end of 2019, an 11% increase year on year.
The bank has a growing share in transactional mobile banking payments via Equitel, a mobile phone platform and currently Kenya’s fastest growing mobile money operator, a segment in which it is the second-largest player after M-Pesa.
Equitel has a 22% market share of mobile banking transactions by value and controls almost 23% of the mobile commerce market in Kenya.
In 2019 the value of Equitel mobile banking transactions rose to $6.23 billion, a growth of 9%, from 267.7 million transactions. Over 3.8 million retail loans valued at $39.2 billion were disbursed in this way.
Fintech integration helped Equity Bank’s diaspora remittances grow by 27% to $1.42 billion, more than a 50% market share in Kenya.
In the loans market, 93% of originations were via mobile. The bank has also introduced EazzyFX, an electronic platform for settling foreign-currency transactions digitally.
