Central Bank of Kenya Governor Dr Patrick Njoroge has announced that amalgamation of NIC Bank and Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) will take effect from Monday, September 20.
In the latest Kenya Gazette Notice, Dr Njoroge the National Treasury Secretary and shareholders of both NIC and CBA approved the merger on March 1, 2019.
CBA is associated with the First Family (the Kenyattas) while NIC is associated with former CBK governor Duncan Ndegwa’s family.
The merger will effectively put the merging entity as the second biggest bank in Kenya behind Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) which acquired National Bank of Kenya last week.
The mergers portend rough times for over 20 small and medium banks which will have little option than to merge.
On Thursday, the National Assembly voted to retain Section 33B of the Banking(Amendment) Act which will retain interest rate caps at 4 per cent over and above the Central Bank floor rate of 9 per cent – which the Monetary Policy Committee has maintained for a while now.
According to communication from the Group MD John Gachora, “The new merged Group will be called NCBA Group PLC and the Kenya operating bank will be known as NCBA Bank Kenya PLC. We will spend the next one month finalising the harmonisation of our systems so that you, our customer, can enjoy seamless services across all our touch points. Our roll out plans also include the unveil of an exciting new identity across all our customer touch points in Kenya”