Equity Bank was named SME Bank of the Year – Africa at the IFC Global SME Finance Awards in Madrid, Spain, in a recognition that highlighted the lender’s focus on micro, small and medium enterprises.
The award, endorsed by the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion (GPFI), was announced at a ceremony on 2018-11-21. The Global SME Finance Awards are designed to recognise financial institutions and fintech companies that have delivered strong products and services to SME clients, including innovative digital offerings and measurable financing impact.
More than 100 applicants were considered before a judging panel drawn from financial institutions, investors, fintech companies and development banks made its selection. The panel assessed the number of MSMEs financed, the volume of financing, originality, innovation, project performance and the ability to adapt to changing opportunities.
SME Finance Forum CEO Matthew Gamser congratulated the winners of the inaugural awards and said they represented institutions that had delivered strong SME offerings in their markets.
“These awards celebrate the best-in-class financial institutions and fintech’s that have achieved remarkable results in their SME product or service offerings. Our winners are diverse, but they all share a strong commitment to helping small businesses in their markets with their dedication and innovative practices. The winners are an inspiration to us and their peers,” he said.
For Equity Bank, the award reinforced its positioning around MSME banking. The lender said MSMEs account for 69.8% of its total loan book and 76.7% of its total deposits, underscoring how central the segment is to its business model.
Equity Bank SME Banking General Manager Jeremy Kamau said the bank had helped reshape banking through digital innovation and a wider use of technology.
“Equity Bank has revolutionized banking by breaking barriers of geography time and space. We leveraged the power of technology with the objective of self-disruption and virtualization to change the bank from ‘where you go’ to ‘what you do’. This revolution has created sustainability of financial access and placed the power of banking in the hands of the customers, giving them freedom, choice and control,” he said.
The bank said its MSME-focused products include EazzyBiz, EazzyNet and EazzyApp, alongside trade finance and treasury instruments for small businesses. It also said it operates more than 36,000 bank agents across rural, urban, pastoral and marginalised areas in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and DR Congo.
Its women-focused Fanikisha services have, since 2007, disbursed more than USD 363 million to 338,000 women through loans, while 39,070 entrepreneurs have been trained with support from Norfund, the International Labour Organisation, Mastercard Foundation and the Lundin Foundation.
In 2010, Equity Group Foundation and Mastercard Foundation launched the Financial Knowledge for Africa (FiKA) programme. Through FiKA, the bank said it has trained more than 1.7 million women and youth in financial literacy and money management, with loans totalling Ksh 69.7 billion, or US$ 680 million. It also said 600,000 subsistence farmers have been helped to move into agribusiness or small-scale commercial farming through training.
Equity Group Managing Director and CEO Dr James Mwangi said the recognition reflected the bank’s work in building high-impact enterprises and widening financial inclusion across Africa.
“Having started as a small business over 34 years ago, we acutely understand the hurdles MSMEs face and have developed solutions to challenges such as lack of access to capital and markets, and lack of business management knowledge and skills,” he said.
Nyakundi Report notes that the award came as Equity Bank continued to lean on its SME strategy, digital channels and agent network to deepen access to financial services for ordinary customers and small businesses.
