KCB, Equity Group secure spots in Africa’s top 5 banks ranking

Two Kenyan banking giants, KCB Group and Equity Group, have secured spots in Africa’s top five best-performing banks in the prestigious annual ranking by The Banker, a Financial Times publication, with KCB placed third and Equity fifth on the continent.

The rankings, which strip out the effect of bank size and focus purely on financial ratios and year-on-year improvements, saw Nigeria’s Guaranty Trust Bank take the crown, followed by South Africa’s Capitec Bank in second place. Egypt’s Commercial International Bank, which entered Kenya through the 2023 acquisition of Mayfair Bank, came in fourth.

The Banker’s model scores lenders across eight critical categories – including tier-one capital growth, profitability, operational efficiency, liquidity, leverage, return on risk, asset quality and overall growth – using 17 separate ratios.
Kenyan lenders shone brightly in nearly every metric except asset quality, where stubbornly high non-performing loans (NPLs) remained the only notable weakness.

Equity Group emerged as Africa’s fastest-growing bank with a near-perfect growth score of 8.31 out of 10, driven by strong expansion in assets, loans, deposits and operating income. KCB claimed second place continent-wide for soundness and leverage.

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Remarkably, both banks outperformed several larger African peers on performance ratios despite ranking only 13th (KCB) and 15th (Equity) when measured purely by tier-one capital size. KCB leapt from 22nd to 13th in dollar-denominated tier-one capital after a 54.9 per cent surge in 2024, while Equity climbed from 19th to 15th on the back of 38.4 per cent growth.

However, rising bad loans continue to cloud the otherwise stellar picture. As of June 2025, KCB’s non-performing loans stood at KSh 189.1 billion – representing 17.2 per cent of its KSh 1.09 trillion loan book – while Equity reported KSh 71.2 billion in NPLs, or 17.5 per cent of its KSh 406.8 billion portfolio.

The two banks set aside KSh 12.4 billion and KSh 7.3 billion respectively in loan-loss provisions during the period.
Across Kenya’s banking sector, gross non-performing loans have climbed from KSh 672.6 billion at the end of 2024 to KSh 731.8 billion by August 2025, prompting lenders to step up debt recovery through courts and auctioneers.