Equity Bank ceo James Mwangi [photo/theworldfolio.com/]
Equity Bank has been recognized as a high-impact enterprise that has transformed the African financial services sector by creating extraordinary wealth and jobs, effectively improving the lives of millions of people.
Equity’s turnaround from humble beginnings to a market leader is captured in a book that was recently launched in Nairobi titled ‘Developing Africa’s Financial Services: The Importance of High-Impact Entrepreneurship’.
Developing Africa’s Financial Services is published by Emerald Publishing, a leading publisher of business and management journals and books.
Sponsored by the World Bank, the book is written by renowned scholars and edited by Prof Dana Redford, founder, and president of Policy Experimentation & Evaluation Platform, an organization that deals with research in entrepreneurship and public policy.
The authors explore Africa-based solutions in mobile banking, impact investing and crowdfunding that are transforming Africa.
Taking the spotlight alongside other remarkable African banks such as the Banco Unico in Mozambique, Fidelity in Ghana and Banco Atlantico in Angola, Equity Bank has been termed “a strong partner for aspiring entrepreneurs” and a bank that “promotes financial inclusion”.
The book traces the bank’s journey from its inception in 1984 when it was a building society opening up mortgage opportunities for low-income customers.
According to the book, African financial markets are in the throes of an unprecedented transformation that seeks to expand financial inclusion and create sophisticated financial services for a continually evolving corporate and industrial business sector.
While foreign banks have dominated the continent’s banking sector post-Independence, a domestic financial services infrastructure is developing.
To address the challenges of having a predominantly informal sector, there is emerging a new generation of homegrown entrepreneurs focused on fast-tracking solutions to financial exclusion.
In banking, this implies reaching new customers and simplifying access to services.High-impact entrepreneurs are characterized by innovation, job creation, wealth creation and a transformative impact on society.
They tend to be leaders in the sectors and have social responsibility shaping their businesses. Such entrepreneurs are highly adaptable and resilient as demonstrated by Equity Bank’s come back from insolvency in 1994. Twenty-five years ago, only four percent of the Kenyan population was banked compared to the current 82.6 percent.