2017 was a more challenging year for Kenyan banks, and borrowers due to interest rating capping, elections affecting Kenya’s economy, the crunch in South Sudan, while 2018 will be more interesting with IFRS9. Here is a ranking of Kenya’s top banks, and the rankings are by bank assets as at December 2017 – and compared with the previous years’ rankings (in brackets):

1 (1) KCB: Assets of Kshs 555 billion and a pre-tax profit of Kshs 27. 5 billion. Have 13 million mobile customers, and 57% transactions were done on mobile devices, 15% by bank agents and 10% at bank ATM’s. However, KCB did not roll out a new digital strategy direction in 2017 as earlier announced. Combined group assets were Kshs 646 billion (US$6.4 billion).

2 (2) Equity Bank:  Focused on fee income, transaction processing and treasury business over interest income, and their CEO said micro-lending will only resume after interest rate caps are lifted.

3 (3) Cooperative Bank.

4 (5) Standard Chartered Kenya.

5 (4) Barclays launched Timiza app in 2018 which should enable a big retail banking leap. It will also begin a process of rebranding to Absa.

6 (6) Diamond Trust: Bought Habib bank.

7 (8) Stanbic Bank (formerly CFC Stanbic)

8 (7) Commercial Bank of Africa: Now in five countries after using M-shwari to expand to Ivory Coast and Rwanda – where they recently acquired Crane Bank Rwanda.

9 (10) NIC Bank.

10 (9) Investment & Mortgages (I&M):  Assets of Kshs 184 billion, and pre-tax profits of Kshs 7.5 billion. They have fully absorbed Giro Bank and are now in Kenya Tanzania, Rwanda, and Mauritius. Group assets of Kshs 202 billion (US$ 2 billion)

11 (11) National Bank.

More rankings to follow.