KCB Group, Kenya’s biggest bank by assets, has retained a portion of National Bank of Kenya’s (NBK) customers, assets, and liabilities after selling the lender to Nigeria’s Access Bank, as some shared clients opted to stay with the Kenyan bank.
The sale of NBK, concluded on May 30 for an estimated $100 million, transferred the troubled lender in full to Access. But KCB said several customers who maintained relationships with both banks remained under its management, leaving the group with a slice of NBK’s loan book and deposits.
“Whenever you run a transaction, there are interests on both sides,” KCB chief executive Paul Russo told Business Daily. “A customer in KCB might also have had an account at NBK. If a loan is secured with deposits or collateral that sit on our books, that client is better off engaging with us than moving to Access.”
KCB has not disclosed the value of the assets and liabilities retained in the transactions, but says it has paired exposures with matching assets to ensure loans remain fully secured. The bank has also kept what it considered its strongest NBK clients, having assessed their performance since 2019, when it took control of the bank.
“Because we have been running the organisation (NBK), we know certain customers better, so we can keep them, and some are extremely well performing,” Russo said.
The disposal has freed up capital for KCB, whose directors recommended an interim and special dividend of $0.031 (KES4) per share following completion of the deal. The payout is scheduled for November 11 to shareholders on record as of September 3.
NBK, which reported assets of $1.1 billion (KES149.5 billion) and customer deposits of $808.4 (KES104.3 billion) at the end of March 2025, will become the centrepiece of Access Bank’s East African strategy. The Nigerian lender expects the acquisition to increase its presence in Kenya and strengthen its corporate and retail offerings.
“Kenya stands at the heart of regional commerce, and with NBK now part of the Access family, we are better positioned to deliver high-impact banking solutions,” Access Bank managing director Roosevelt Ogbonna said in May. Access Bank, which had 22 branches in Kenya, will take on NBK’s 85-branch nationwide network, giving it a much larger presence in the market. However, the Nigerian lender will have to inject more capital into NBK to meet regulatory capital requirements and support the bank’s turnaround after years of weak performance.
