Best bank: Equity Bank
Equity Bank continued to grow its total assets in 2023, surpassing the KSh1 trillion ($7.7 billion) mark at the end of the year. The bank maintained a third of its consumer loans to salaried civil servants, teachers and private-sector employees at 13% interest, despite the central bank hiking rates much higher.
It also maintained all loans disbursed during the interest rate-capping period at the same rate.
This has flowed through to the balance sheet where interest income was up 23% against interest expenses – which almost doubled from KSh23.9 billion in 2022 to KSh40.3 billion in 2023. Nevertheless, the bank still generated a net profit for the year of KSh26.7 billion.
In November last year, Equity Bank completed its acquisition of CogeBanque in Rwanda. The resultant entity, Equity Bank Rwanda, is the second largest bank there.
The bank has also made progress in its trade-finance business, where it has increased its customer base by 40%. This has largely been driven by Chinese clients undertaking infrastructure projects in the country, including roads, housing and dams.
Best investment bank: Stanbic Bank Kenya
This year’s best investment bank in Kenya, Stanbic Bank Kenya, has been involved in some of the biggest and most innovative deals in the market. It acted on Diageo’s KSh22.7 billion ($170 million) tender offer to increase its stake in East Africa Breweries, which involved working with the Nairobi Stock Exchange to design a block trade settlement mechanism to successfully execute the deal. It was the largest single trade ever on the NSE.
The deal saw Stanbic Bank Kenya use online and mobile platforms to facilitate tender offer subscriptions – a first for the NSE.
Stanbic Bank Kenya also acted as co-mandated lead arranger on a $202 million sustainability-linked loan for connected asset financing platform, M-Kopa. The borrower provides underbanked customers in Africa with essential products such as solar lighting, televisions, smartphones and fridges.
Best digital bank: Standard Chartered
Standard Chartered’s Straight2Bank NextGen upgrade has improved the digital experience for corporate clients with improved personalization and consistency across desktop and mobile devices. Adoption of the Straight2Bank Mobile App has rose to 72% from 59% in 2022.
Several new features were added to Straight2Bank NextGen, including live chat for efficient customer support, shipping guarantees under import letters of credit, one-time payee payout for flexible salary payments, e-statements with bank stamps for convenient printing, e-advice for payments ensuring transparent transaction confirmations and Trade Track It for real-time visibility on counter guarantees.
The bank has invested in the integration of over 150 application programming interfaces across sectors such as telecoms, financial services, logistics, travel, health, medical services and manufacturing. This enables seamless data exchange, real-time account querying, payment initiation and reconciliation.
Over 70% of documentary trade transactions, 60% of open account transactions and 100% of supplier finance transactions are now initiated via Straight2Bank.
Best bank for SMEs: Equity Bank
Equity Bank is a strong player in the small and medium-sized enterprise market, with loans to this segment making up 25% of its entire book.
The bank has customized digital, savings and loan products for farmers, and has provided training, mentorships and financial services access to 3.98 million farmers and 7,908 micro, small and medium-sized agriculture enterprises. It also launched an e-voucher solution via the Equitel STK closed-loop system, restricting subsidy use to specific KCEP agro-dealers’ shops.
The bank is part of the five-year Young Africans Work Kenya programme with the Mastercard Foundation, which aims to generate 810,000 jobs. This involves facilitating finance access for 150,000 MSMEs. By 2023, the initiative had provided training to 32,958 MSMEs alongside disbursing Ksh2.6 billion ($20.2 million) in loans to foster growth and sustainability.
Best bank for ESG: Kenya Commercial Bank
In 2023, Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) focused its efforts on green financing, managing its own carbon footprint and launching new sustainability products.
Green loans are now 17% of its total loan book. The bank is targeting this to be 25% by 2025 with green initiatives in renewable energy, energy efficiency and e-mobility projects. It secured a $150 million line of credit from the International Finance Corporation to expand its climate finance portfolio, funding energy-efficient projects, renewable energy, climate-smart initiatives and green buildings.
KCB has converted 50% of its branches to energy-efficient LED lighting and installed solar power systems at two branches. It aims to reduce internal resource consumption (water, paper, fuel and electricity) by 5% to minimize its carbon footprint.
The bank opened accounts and issued loans to support women entrepreneurs. Since October 2023, over 3,000 women have received skills training to enhance their business management capabilities.
It has also promoted green cooking energy in schools with an investment of KShs17.5 million ($136,000). The bank also provided grants totalling KSh60 million to 30 schools for purchasing and installing liquefied petroleum gas equipment.
Best bank for corporate responsibility: Equity Bank
Equity Bank continues to allocate 2% of its annual revenue to the Equity Group Foundation, focusing on education, sustainability and local community support.
The Wings to Fly and Elimu programmes have provided 55,583 secondary school scholarships and 8,337 paid internships.
The foundation has provided entrepreneurship training to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, and supported 5.4 million households with over KSh139 billion ($1.08 billion) in social protection cash transfers, supported by the government.
The bank’s value chain agriculture financing model has disbursed KSh9.8 billion to over 98,000 farmers through its Kilimo Biashara loan product, while its sustainable health model, Afia, has enabled a network of clinician entrepreneurs to deliver quality outpatient care, resulting in 843,821 patient visits in 2023.
