Equity Bank has today announced its Half Year 2016 results, which has seen its Pretax profit rise 18% to Kshs. 18.2 Billion. The Bank’s profit after tax also rose 18% to Kshs. 10 Billion. At the same time, the bank saw its customers increase to 11 Million clients.
The bank has been working on digitizing its operations propelled by its Equitel Platform and incorporates agency banking and merchants. According to Equity Bank CEO, Equity Bank is responsible for 52% of all merchant banking locally with the number of Equity agents increasing to 25,000 agents. The agents performed 5 Million transactions over the last six months with the value of monthly transactions valued at Kshs. 37 Billion.
The Bank has also been keen to increase its merchant network to fuel commerce. There are currently 8,000 Equity Bank merchants ranging from supermarkets to fuel stations whose value of transactions is worth Kshs. 22 Billion.
In 2015, Equity Bank announced the launch of Equitel through its subsidiary Finserve Africa. Equitel was seen by the bank as a tool through which it seeks to bring a convergence between mobile money transfer services and banking for its customers. The platform has been witnessing exponential growth, which has seen it perform 10 times more transactions than branches.
In the last half-year, Equitel has seen the number of its customers surge to 2.2 Million, a big boon for the bank. Equity Bank issued 4.3 Million loans in the last six months, with Equitel accounting for 3.6 Million of these transactions. This represented 82% of all the loans given by the bank. Customer loans via Equitel totaled 20.8 Billion with the banks stating that the loan repayment rate stood at 98%. Customer deposits on the other hand stood at Kshs. 5.6 Billion. Equitel says that the transaction volumes rose 225% while the value of transactions rose 525% in the Half Year 2016.
