In 2009 Equity Bank ran one of the most successful campaigns that turned banking on its head, an ecstatic mimi ni member slogan that even featured a little girl of around 12 years old.
Today she would be around 22 years and if she could see a huge billboard the lender has put up along Ngong Road just outside Kenyatta Hospital, she would be familiar with the moniker member.
Equity, which became the first Kenyan bank to own more than Sh1 trillion in assets by buying financiers in East and Central Africa, had forgotten her, and this perhaps is a turning point.
In 2017 the lender’s boss James Mwangi announced the divorce stating the bank was moving away from small businesses for being too risky, to lend instead corporates and the risk-free government.
"We are moving away from unsecured lending. IFRS 9 (International Financial Reporting Standard) requires you to use historical ratio to make provisions at point of booking the loan. This is not sustainable with a margin of seven percent," he said at the time.
Now Dr Mwangi who declared the brick and mortar branch is dead, is beating a hasty retreat and just announced the bank will open 60 branches across the country designed to return to the member as the bank re-discovers its roots.
Financial access
The move will take the branch network to 249 across the country which the lender says will enable it to serve millions of its customers better while also bringing banking services and financial access closer to the community.
"We are a community bank and we understand why it is important to bring financial services closer to the community. This will help transform their lives and grow their businesses. The Equity Group has already approved to increase our outlets by 60," Dr Mwangi said in Maralal town while commissioning the of Wings To Fly Programme.
This is a complete turnaround from the decorated CEO who boasted that his bank was just two percent short of fully shifting all its transactions onto digital platforms.
Dr Mwangi has been hammering the point home that the group altered its strategy to adopt to the changing environment and executed a rapid business transformation that saw 98 percent of all transactions being digital in count, and 65 percent of volume by value.This strategy meant the lender could let go of staff even as the bank grew in size. Equity Bank had 8,000 employees in 2013 serving […]
