Equity Bank and KCB Group have won awards at the 2019 Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The awards they received are Africa’s Best Digital Bank 2019 and Africa’s best bank for SMEs 2019 respectively.
KCB Group recently received funding from Mastercard Foundation to expand its 2jiajiri program. The program provides technical training, Business Development Services, Access to finance and linkages to structured markets to young entrepreneurs.
Digitization efforts have been Equity Bank launched various digital services that include EazzyPay, EazzyLoan and also Jenga API, via its subsidiary Finserve.
Other winners in the 2019 Euromoney Awards for Excellence for Africa included Guaranty Trust Bank, which won the best bank award and Standard Bank, which won the best investment bank award. Other winners included Standard Chartered which won the sustainable finance award and Absa which won the transformation award. Standard Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Absa all operate in Kenya. Standard Bank operates in Kenya as Stanbic Bank while Absa currently operates in Kenya as Barclays Bank Kenya (BBK).It plans to rebrand to Absa Kenya soon. Barclays Bank of Kenya (BBK) shareholders have approved the name change of the bank to Absa and the bank has until June 2020 to complete the process.
The full list of 2019 Euromoney Awards for Excellence winners are as follows;
- Africa’s best bank 2019: Guaranty Trust Bank
- Africa’s best investment bank 2019: Standard Bank
- Africa’s best bank for financing 2019: Citi
- Africa’s best bank for sustainable finance 2019: Standard Chartered
- Africa’s best digital bank 2019: Equity Bank
- Africa’s best bank for corporate responsibility 2019: Société Générale
- Africa’s best bank for wealth management 2019: Standard Bank
- Africa’s best bank for transaction services 2019: Citi
- Africa’s best bank for advisory 2019: Chapel Hill Denham
- Africa’s best bank for SMEs 2019: Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB)
- Africa’s best bank transformation 2019: Absa