Disruption Of Bank Operations & Strategy Earns Equity Bank 16th Best Bank In The World

Digitization and virtualization, disruption of delivery channels, transforming the business model and redefining customer’s experience delivered Equity bank’s 10% growth in Profit Before Tax during the first half-year of 2019.

Assets made the most growth with total assets reaching Kshs.638.7 billion up from Kshs.542.02 billion registered the same period the previous year. Interest earning assets grew to Kshs.500.5 billion up from Kshs.433.9 billion driven by a 17% growth in net loan book to Ksh. 320.9 billion up from Ksh.275 billion and a 13% growth in government securities to Kshs.179.6 billion up from Ksh. 158.9 billion. The total growth in total assets went up by 18%.

James Mwangi, the Group Managing Director, and CEO attributed the growth in assets to the successful mobilization of deposits; “Our customer-centric and ecosystem approach to intermediation has given us an opportunity to target our customer’s horizontal and vertical value chains.” He added, “The branch is evolving to an SME advisory center as a majority of our customers move to more convenient self-service digital channels.”

Easy access of loans through mobile phones as well as digitization of transactions for Equity account holders highly contributed to the growth in profit with a significant attribution to Equity 3.0 strategy set to leverage more on technology and innovation.

Launched in 2014, in 2017 the Group crystallized its 3.0 Strategy of digitization through its digital suite of self-service tools known as Eazzy Banking. This saw an exponential growth of customer activity in third-party channels which now contribute to large transaction volumes. The bank transitioned from Equity 2.0 where it was viewed as an East African Bank to Equity 3.0 where it is set to transform to a pan-African Bank.

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The convenience of virtualization and digitization saw the number of loans disbursed reach 2 million out of which 1.9 million loans (93%), worth Kshs.20.0 billion were disbursed through the Equitel mobile channel while 100,000 loans (7%) worth Kshs 70.9 billion were disbursed through the branch.

97% of all banking transactions were done outside the branch with Eazzy app transactions growing by 28% to reach 146 million up from 114 million transactions; Equitel transactions grew by 5% from 121 million to 126 million transactions; agent banking transactions grew by 15% from 38 million to 44 million transactions; Eazzy biz transactions grew by 79% from 800,000 to 1.4 million transactions; Eazzy pay transactions grew by 101% from 574,000 to 1.15 million transactions; Merchant transactions grew by 36% to reach 10.7 million up from 7.9 million transactions.

On its 2019 Global ranking of the world’s top 1000 banks, the Banker has ranked Equity Group as the 16th Best Bank in the world on return on assets, 32nd Best Bank in return on capital, 75th best on soundness measured on capital asset ratio, 844th largest bank in the world and the fastest-growing large bank in Africa.

Gathoni Kuria

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