Kenyan bank to expand regional presence

Kenya's Cooperative Bank plans to expand its operations into Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia by the end of 2016, officials said on Wednesday.

The bank's managing director Gideon Muriuki told an investor briefing in Nairobi that the financial institution will enter these countries through joint ventures with the local cooperative movement.

"We are currently holding discussions with the governments with a view to acquiring operating licenses," Muriuki said.

The bank has operations in Kenya and South Sudan. Muriuki said joint venture offers great opportunities for long-term sustainability of the business.

The bank's subsidiary in South Sudan, which began operations in 2014, is a joint venture with the South Sudanese government holding 49 percent of the operations.

Muriuki stated the bank currently operates two branches in South Sudan, with an additional three set to be opened in 2015.

Cooperative Bank is the main banker of the country's ten million member strong co-operative movement. According to the 2014 full year financial results, the bank made a pretax profit of 118. 4 million U.S. dollars, which is a 0.5 percent jump from the 117.8 million dollars in 2013.

Muriuki attributed the low profit increase to a one-off charge of 14.5 million dollars related to the retrenching staff that was undertaken in order to increase the bank's efficiency.

The managing director said for the 2015 financial year, the firm expects a 30 percent jump in pretax profit due to the ongoing favorable economic conditions.

"We will also re-orient our physical branches so that they focus on customers and not products," he said.

The bank said that in order to cut costs and improve efficiency, they are encouraging the migration of customers to other delivery channels such mobile banking and agency banking.

The bank currently has over 8,765 agents and 1.4 million customers on the mobile banking platform. Endi