Most Profitable Bank in Kenya: Once again, the Kenya Commercial Bank has taken the top position as Kenya’s most profitable bank. This is after Equity Bank released its full year earnings, which fell short of the margins recorded by KCB.
Equity Bank’s net profit by five percent to Sh. 19.8 billion for the year ending December 2018.
The bank’s interest income from Treasury bonds rose by 21.7 percent to Sh. 16.3 billion, with the lender continuing its policy of shifting lending to government since the introduction of controls on cost of loans.
Equity’s holdings of government securities shot up 26 percent from Sh. 128 billion in 2017 to Sh. 161 billion at the close of 2018, while its loan book grew by six percent from Sh. 279.1 billion to Sh. 297.2 billion.
On the other end, KCB posted a net profit rise of 21.8 percent to Sh. 24 billion last year. This means that it posted some Sh. 2 billion more profit than Equity.
In the third position is Co-operative Bank, which poste an 11.6 per cent jump in earnings to Sh. 12.7 billion net profit.
This means that among the three top banks, Equity Bank recorded the least profit growth with only a five per cent gain.