Category Archives: Diamond Trust

Which way the bank branch?

This month saw Family Bank open a branch in Eastleigh, its 92nd in the country. Family is one of the pioneers of paperless branches and had opened another branch in December near the large Wangige market to serve traders. Eastleigh is an important cog of Kenyan supply chains and is estimated to have the second-highest density of traders, second only to the Nairobi CBD. Despite advances in mobile transfers, small traders are still heavy users of cash for transactions.

Then today Diamond Trust announced the consolidation of six branches that are adjacent to each other: Oval and 9 West (both to Westgate), Eastleigh to Madina Mall, Garden City to TRM mall, Jamhuri Street (to Malindi) and Kago Street (to Eldoret). The bank asked customers to continue using alternative channels while staff will be redeployed to other branches and business units.

We can probably expect to see more branch consolidations or closures as two groups KCB-NBK and NCBA (CBA & NIC) continue to refine their new operating structures. CBA and NIC did some closures last year.

When KCB announced their third-quarter 2020 results, they shared some interesting details about branches and the march to digital. KCB branches did 2% of transactions in Q3 2020 compared to 5% the previous year. Also, there was a 16% decline in transactions done per day by branch tellers from 60 to 50, while customers did 43% fewer transactions (5.8 million compared to 10.2 million) than in the previous year. KCB customers did 77% of their financial transactions on mobile phones, 17% at agents / internet / point of sale (cards), and 4% at ATM’s. More ATM’s now accept cheque deposits, not just cash, and also act as 24-hour M-Pesa agents.

The Central Bank of Kenya’s Supervision Report for 2019 shows KCB with 203 branches, followed by Equity with 171 (and 12 sub-branches), Co-op Bank 152, Absa 107, Family had 92 in 2019, NBK 78, and Diamond Trust 70. Between 2018 and 2019 there was a drop of 16 branches from 1,505 to 1,490 with 7 of them in Nairobi that ended 2019 with 593.  NCBA has 37 branches but serves the largest number of bank customers in Kenya by far, 31 million thanks to M-Shwari, its partnership with Safaricom.

Outside the country, there is growth as Kenyan banks operate 316 branches in the region, up from 207. They are led by Equity that has 44 in DRC and 39 in Uganda,  Equity has a total of 116, followed by Diamond Trust with 68 (36 in Uganda, 28 in Tanzania, 4 in Burundi)  and KCB with 60.

During Covid-19, foot traffic has reduced at malls, offices shopping centres and bank branches. This has also been due to the growth of online shopping that has taken off exponentially, and many facilities now have dedicated desk and parking spaces for motorcycle delivery riders.

No sign yet of banks moving to share branch spaces with each other but there is less need for banks to be on the ground floor of buildings, which is usually more costly. Also, shopping malls tend to have a banking floor (top of Garden City mall) or ATM corner where several bank services are grouped.

Bank Roundup: January 2019

The boards of NIC and CBA banks confirmed their plans to go ahead with a merger to create the largest bank in Africa by customer numbers. Serving over 40 million customers in 5 countries, the combined entity will have Kshs 444 billion in assets (~ $4.4 billion).

Currently, they are both at 115 billion of loans and have differences in deposits with 145 billion at NIC to 191 billion at CBA and customer numbers of 142,000 at NIC to 41 million at CBA. They had relatively similar customer numbers prior to CBA’s launch of M-Shwari in partnership with Safaricom. 

Going forward they aim to obtain shareholder approval in Q1, obtain regulatory approval in Q2 and have the new entity commence operations in Q3 of 2019. Currently, NIC has 26,000 shareholders and is listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) while CBA has 34 shareholders (20 individual, 14 corporations) including Enke Investments (24.91%), Ropat Nominees (22.50%), Livingstone Registrars (19.90%) and  Yana Investments (11.14%). The merger will be effected through share swaps that will result in NIC shareholders owning 47% and CBA shareholders 53% of the new entity whose shares will remain listed on the NSE.

MCB in Kenya:  Leading Mauritius Lender MCB Group has officially opened its representative office in Nairobi. The largest and oldest bank in Mauritius, with $12 billion in assets and a presence in nine countries, it had been licensed in Kenya back in 2015 and it will bank on its new office to gauge opportunities in the Kenyan market and build strategic relationships.

The 19th largest bank in Africa by assets, it is listed in Mauritius and has 19,000 shareholders. It has a strategic objective of growing its international footprint and expanding non-bank activities. It has 1 million customers, 3,500 employees and 55 branches but, as it was communicated at the launch, they have no intention of opening branches in Kenya or East Africa.

Ethiopia Bank summary: Asoko Insight gave a summary report of the Ethiopian banking sector, parts of which are only available to subscribers. While some foreign investment is expected in Ethiopia, the banking sector is already privatized with fifteen of the country’s eighteen banks all having private local owners. The state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia is the largest bank in the East Africa region with 1,280 branches and earns 67% of the sector profits in the country.  It has revenue of $1.3 billion, while 11 (other) banks, have revenues of between $50 million and $500 million, suggesting a more concentrated market in terms of size.

Tanzania:  NMB bank has waived several bank charges for their customers from February 1 including account opening, monthly maintenance, transaction fees, dormant account reactivation, and internal transfers – all in a bid to promote financial inclusion in the country.

Meanwhile, several Tanzania banks have a series of new managing directors including NIC Bank, Akiba Commercial Bank and Bank of Africa Tanzania

Family Bank pled guilty in the NYS case:

Diamond Trust CEO questioned.

CBK Fines Banks over NYS Transactions 

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has levied bank fines against five institutions over transactions relating to their handling of payments and movement of funds sent from the scandal-plagued National Youth Service (NYS).

The banks are Diamond Trust which handled Kshs 162 million, and was fined Kshs 56 million, Co-operative Bank which handled 263 million (and was fined 20 million), KCB which handled Kshs 639 million (fined 149.5 million), Equity moves Kshs 886 million (89.5 million fine) and Standard Chartered which handled Kshs 1.63 billion from the NYS, and which was fined Kshs 77.5 million.

The CBK statement read that the bank fines followed investigations into failures at the banks including; not reporting large cash transactions, not doing due diligence on customers, lack of support documents for large transactions and lapses in reporting suspicious financial transactions to the Financial Reporting Centre (FRC).

Notably missing was Family Bank that featured heavily in a prominent series of transactions of funds that originated from procurements at the NYS. It has been previously sanctioned and branch and senior staff are being prosecuted.

All the banks which handled NYS funds had been named earlier and the CBK statement added that this was not the end, with an additional group of banks set to be identified and investigated.

EDIT:  In a filing to the London Stock Exchange, Standard Chartered disclosed that the bank had, in December 2019, entered a settlement with Kenya’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to defer prosecution of the bank and any people affiliated with it, and which would see the bank pay a penalty of Kshs 100 million ($964,000).

Kenyan Mergers and Job Retention

This week the deal for Diamond Trust Bank to acquire Habib Bank was approved by regulatory authorities. The Central Bank of Kenya approval notes that Habib will acquire 4.18% of Diamond Trust (the 6th largest bank in the country) and that the transaction would be completed on August 1, 2017, when Habib Bank (the 33rd largest) will cease being a licensed bank, and all its depositors, borrowers, employees, and creditors will be transferred to Diamond Trust.

As is the norm these days for large M&A deals to be approved in Kenya and the COMESA trade zone of Africa, there is a focus on job retention for as many of employees, and that there be no layoffs, while some business will continue with existing partners in terms of sales, distribution, servicing, and licenses for a defined period of time after the deal.

  • The Competition Authority (CAK) has approved the Diamond Trust Habib deal “on condition that the acquirer, Diamond Trust Bank Kenya retains at least 41 employees of Habib Bank post transaction.” This is also seen in other recent deals approved by the Competition Authority:
  • Distell Holdings which became the majority owner of Kenya Wine Agencies Holdings East Africa earlier this year was required to “retain the 42 employees at the production unit of KWAL for at least three years,”
  • For the Coca Cola Beverages Africa purchase of Equator Bottlers (at Kisumu through Kretose Investment) “the merged entity retains at least 2,279 employees post transaction”
  • And approval of the acquisition of 57.7% of General Motors East Africa by Isuzu Motors has a “condition that the merged entity will absorb all of the 383 General Motors East Africa employees.”
  • Also, earlier, CAK, ordered listed banker I&M Holdings to retain 108 employees of Giro Commercial Bank, as a pre-condition for approval of the takeover.

Diamond Trust & Habib: Bank Mergers & Musical Chairs – Part III

See Part I and Part II 

  • An unexpected piece of news today was the announcement that Diamond Trust intends to acquire Habib Bank.  Diamond Trust is Kenya’s  sixth-largest bank with assets of Kshs 230 billion (September 2016), while Habib is number 34 with assets of Kshs 11 billion. The banks have a common shareholding through the Aga Khan network. EDIT: the purchase will be done by the issuance of 13.28 million shares of Diamond Trust at Kshs 137.39, valuing the deal at Kshs 1.82 billion. Other shareholders of Diamond Trust will be diluted by 4.75%.
  • A week earlier, the Central Bank of Kenya also announced that it was in the process of licensing two new banks – DIB and Mayfair. DIB Kenya is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dubai Islamic Bank, a leading sharia-compliant bank from the United Arab Emirates. DIB is not associated, and won’t want to be linked to the Dubai Bank that’s currently in liquidation.  Mayfair Bank is owned by a diverse group of Kenyan investors with interests in various sectors (including politics)
  • Also, a decision on Chase Bank is expected in the next few weeks. A target had been set to restore the bank back to indecent owners by the first anniversary of it being put into receivership. A merger or buyout is likely.
  • More mergers expected with the credit squeeze on small banks?

Edit

From a Diamond Trust newspaper release

  • Habib is the largest private bank in Pakistan with 1,673 branches in 22 countries. The deal will enable DTB to establish relationships with frontier markets in Asia where Habib has operations and this is also in line with the CBK policy of consolidation in the Kenyan banking sector.
  • The lead transaction advisor for the deal was Pacifis Advisory, assisted by PWC while Anjarwalla & Khanna was the lead legal advisor.