Stake in Crane Bank on table

“We must go digital and deliver products more cheaply,” said John Gachora, the chief executive of NIC Bank.

But it will be tough matching earnings before the cap. The average return on equity for listed banks was 21 percent last year, the highest in Africa, compared with 18 percent in South Africa and single digits for European and US banks.

Standard Investment Bank (SIB) expected returns to fall to between 16 percent and 18 percent after the cap, which included a floor for deposit rates.

For now, just 2 percent of loans offered by Kenya’s 11 listed banks were issued via mobile platforms, so it would take time to make up losses from the more traditional loan market, SIB said.

Mobile operator Safaricom’s M-Pesa lets customers pay bills or transfer cash on the simplest handsets. Safaricom also runs the M-Shwari banking platform with privately owned CBA Bank.

M-Shwari had 16 million customers and offered 70 000 loans a day – averaging 3 250 shillings (R442) each. – Reuters ATLAS Mara, the African financial services company co-founded by the former head of Barclays’ Bob Diamond, was in talks to acquire a stake in Uganda’s Crane Bank, a person familiar with the matter said. The talks were at an early stage, the person said, asking not to be identified because the discussions were private. Atlas Mara values the bank at $250 million (R4 billion), while Crane Bank says it is worth $300m, a Nairobi-based east African newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information. Crane Bank said in September that it was looking for a strategic equity investor with a regional or continental network. Atlas Mara operates in seven African countries and wants to expand further. Diamond is taking over as interim chairman. Diamond’s fellow co-founder, Ashish Thakkar, is Ugandan. – Bloomberg