Scholars study Equity Bank’s model of dealing with customers
Equity Bank chief executive James Mwangi hosts Wings To Fly students who passed the KCSE exam, at Equity Center in Upper Hill, Nairobi, on December 23, 2017. When the Equity Group Holdings was founded on October 1984, it was known as the Equity Building Society.
The 30-year history of Equity Bank and its journey in retail banking has been captured for the first time in a new book.
The scholarly book,
Developing Africa’s Financial Services, The Importance of High Impact Entrepreneurial Services, by Dana Redford, tells the story of Equity Bank in fresh light, including how Equity “democratised” banking in the 1990s.
Equity is currently Kenya’s largest bank by customer accounts.
CUSTOMER BASE
When the Equity Group Holdings was founded on October 1984, it was known as the Equity Building Society.
Today, the bank’s parent company, the Equity Group Holdings, claims a customer base in excess of 9.2 million in the six East African countries that it serves.
In its original structure, Equity Group Holdings aimed at providing mortgage financing for low-income customers, opening up opportunities for those previously excluded from financial services.
BUSINESS MODEL
Due to asset liability mismatch problems of the mortgage business model, Equity Building Society was declared technically insolvent by the Central Bank of Kenya in 1993 but bounced bank as a bank over the years.
In the book, researchers Dr David Zoogah — an associate professor of management at the Williams College of Business, Xavier University, USA — and Christian Wolf — a PHD candidate at Lisbon University in Portugal — trace and highlight the decade from 1994 as uniquely the first phase of growth for Equity when it changed the focus of its business model from mortgages to microfinance.
They then trace the bank’s history that marked its turnaround to robust growth in both the number of customers as well as its profitability eventually culminating in conversion from regulation under the Building Societies Act to the Banking Act in 2004.
The book says Equity Bank’s second phase of growth was marked by expansion of its products menu.
From here it embarked on its journey to becoming a national bank, its migration to a robust core banking system and adoption of alternative business channels.
The role of the Group chief executive officer James Mwangi in the bank’s growth and financial inclusion is also examined at length.
The researchers note the lender’s turnaround was driven by Mr Mwangi, then an accountant and banker, who in 1994 took over as finance, operations and strategy director of the building society before he became CEO in 2004.
The researchers argue that Mr Mwangi “understood from the onset” that the solution to Africa’s problems lay in wealth-creating entrepreneurs.
“(Mr) Mwangi is a transformational leader and entrepreneur who had a great role model and mentor in his mother, who raised seven kids as a single parent working hard as a subsistence farmer,” the authors say.
“He transformed Equity into a bank that supports entrepreneurs on a large scale.”
ACCOUNT HOLDERS
The book says that after his promotion to the position of finance director, Mr Mwangi shifted the organisation’s focus from the competitive mortgage market to micro loans.
The secret of his untested strategy, the book argues, was to offer millions of unbanked citizens — including the rural poor — micro loans from little as Sh500.
The lender at the same time did away with stringent collateral or property-ownership requirements and allowed anyone with a national identity card to open an account.
By comparison, the average loan amount by other banks, especially multinationals, was about Sh16,000.
This was a game changer, the researchers argue.
MOBILE BRANCES
Around the 1990s the banking industry was hit by branch closures.
Equity would however survive the turbulence because of its unconventional banking model.
Additionally, where there were too few customers for it to build branches, Equity would use mobile branches.
The book says this created new standards of service, earning the bank a huge and loyal indigenous customer base, including of formerly unbanked Kenyans.
This also debunked the myth that banking the poor did not make business sense.
“Coming from humble and even troubled beginnings, Equity Bank has transformed itself into a highly competitive player in the banking sector,” the authors say.
“Equity continues the path of high impact entrepreneurship that was chosen in the mid 1990s when the bank launched its turnaround,” they conclude.
NGUGI: Scholars study Equity Bank’s model of dealing with
