Absa’s mobile lending shoot over Sh10Billion

By Steve Umidha

Kenya’s Absa Bank, formerly Barclays Kenya said Wednesday that lending through its mobile application had hit in excess of Sh10billion with about 800,000 customers yet to sign onto the lender’s Timiza.

“We have seen our app grow in leaps and bounds. We are now roughly under 5 million customers, and we really are looking forward to growing that number in the future,” its chief executive Jeremy Awori said.

Absa first launched its digital app “Timiza” — Kiswahili for “Achieve” — in March 2018 and initially attracted 300,000 customers and by the end of the year it had 3 million users.

Absa Kenya, which is part of South Africa’s Absa Group, posted a pretax profit of 8.18 billion shillings in the first nine months of 2019, compared with 7.72 billion shillings in year-earlier period.

Absa Group operates in 12 countries in Africa where it plans further expansion, including to Nigeria where it has a representative office.

Kenyan lenders have in recent years turned to technology as they try to counter competition from mobile phone-based financial services such as from telecoms operator Safaricom’s M-Pesa platform, which had 23.6 million users as of last September.

Absa Bank Kenya’s shares yesterday started trading at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) following the finalisation of its transformation from Barclays after a culmination of the lender’s reorganisation following an agreement by UK banking giant Barclays Plc to sell its controlling stake in Barclays Group Africa in 2017.

The firm launched its new ticker at the bourse, dropping the Barclays brand and “BBK” ticker that has been synonymous with its operations in the Kenyan market for the last 104 years.

“The separation included elements of transformation and making ourselves future proof with investment in technology systems, and this will continue in all our markets,” said Absa Group Chief Executive Daniel Mminele at the bourse. Following the lender’s completion of its rebranding on Tuesday last week, NSE suspended trading of Barclays shares to allow for completion of the transition.