NCBA Group has planned a new M-Shwari company from the banking unit in the bid to create a more personalised and feature-rich digital banking services for its customers.
John Gachora, NCBA Group Chief Executive Officer, said that the process to form a separate fintech company to host its digital loan platforms in the country and others in five countries where the bank operates has progressed.
“What we are now discussing is how we package our business as a fintech so that it can get the right valuation. I understand from what I have seen in some write-ups that people don’t know the details of Fuliza and M-Shwari but we can package it in a way where we can report on all these details,” said Gachora.
“The vision is to have a separate fintech where we put all these businesses together, get the right valuations, give the right disclosures and therefore get some more shareholder value,” he added.
The subsidiary will be led by a CEO and have a separate board.
The move follows a time when banks are increasingly turning to imaginative combinations of software, hardware and data to create and deliver both new and traditional financial products and services.
The NCBA revelation comes weeks after the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) began regulating digital lenders, a move that will give the banking regulator powers to constrain lenders who violate consumer privacy and overcharge consumers.