By Gitahi Ngunyi
Equity Bank has been ranked the 35th most solid bank in the world in a ranking that could trigger a foreign investor to the banking group’s shares at the Nairobi Securities Exchange.
The ranking conducted by The Financial Times owned magazine The Banker looks scores 1000 listed banks in the world against performance ratios to arrive at rankings.
In this year’s scoring Equity was ranked number 11 on Return on Assets, 35th on soundness* based on Capital Assets Ratio, 44th based on Profits on Capital globally.
At the country level, the bank was ranked first Equity’s ranking in Kenya was based on Return on Assets and Capital Assets Ratio and 14.63 percent increase in Tier 1 capital year on year.
This shows that the financial institution has moved seven places up, compared with the 806th position placed last year.
The ranking is an indication that Equity Bank remains robust, despite the challenging operating environment.
The Bank has already developed and adopted a sustainable business model to cushion the business as well as boost value creation for shareholders.
Innovation has proved to be a great enabler in driving growth and already registering efficiency gains from digitization.
According to The Banker, Africa’s economic fortunes improved over the 2017 review period following a difficult couple of years in which lower commodity prices hit the performance of the Africa continents’ largest markets.
The ranking provides each bank’s performance, strength and stability.
This helps track bank performance, identify banking partners for the future and track the big movers and new arrivals by benchmarking on their size, growth, profitability (Return on assets, return on capital and cost to income ratio) as well as advantage in terms of Capital to assets ratio.
