Equity Bank of Kenya named Africa’s best digital bank for 2019

Equity Bank has been named Africa’s Best Digital Bank for 2019 at the Euromoney Awards for Excellence. Equity was recognised for its digital offerings, both in corporate and retail banking and how it uses technology to benefit both clients and the efficiency of the institution.

Digitisation has seen 93% of loans disbursed by the bank, being accessed through the mobile channels, while 97% of all cash-based transactions are happening outside Equity Bank branches, with mobile and agency channels taking the lion’s share.

Digitisation of the customer journey has eased customer experience leading to growth of digital payment transactions by 94% in the last year. It has also supported growth of the Bank’s customer numbers to 13.7 million and customer deposit growth of 12% to Kshs 428.5 billion, up from Kshs 382.4 billion, thus driving the group balance sheet up by 15% to Kshs 605.7 billion as at March 31, 2019. 

These new self-service channels that enable customers to do banking on their own devices has revolutionized money transfer and payments with customers having greater control and freedom to manage their bank accounts. This also confirms that customers want a banking service that is integrated into their everyday lives.

Established in 1992, the Euromoney Awards for Excellence were the first of their kind in the global banking industry. This year, Euromoney received almost 1,000 submissions from banks in the awards programme that covers 20 global awards, more than 50 regional awards, and Best Bank awards in close to 100 countries