Looking For A Big Safe Bank? Here Is How Kenyan Banks Are Classified On Their Assets Strength

When Chase Bank was placed under receivership early this week, panic seized the banking industry and the whole public.

It became a grave matter when the CBK governor Dr. Patrick Njoroge revealed to Kenya the fact that only 7 of the 42 banks were handling about 80% of the Kenya’s population cash. This has raised concerns over the liquidity of the banking sector in Kenya.

Many Kenyans are now concerned with their banks and how secure their money is. It is important to understand all the banks in Kenya are classified in tiers based on their market share and assets owned.

Thus is it is safe to say the bigger the bank the safer given the impact a sudden collapse would have on the entire economy. Their assets and customers provide security as well as the disconnectedness with various economic sectors.

Here are the banks as classified by the Central Bank of Kenya

Tier 1 (Assets over 25 billion shillings)

1 KCB
2 Barclays
3 Standard Chartered
4 Cooperative
5 CFC Stanbic
6 Equity
7 Commercial Bank of Africa
8 Citibank Kenya
9 NIC
10National Bank of Kenya
11 Diamond Trust
12 Investment & Mortgages

Tier 2 (Assets of 6 – 24.9 billion)
13Prime
14Housing Finance
15 Imperial
16 Bank of Africa
17 Bank of India
18 Ecobank
19 Family Bank
20 Baroda
21 Chase
22 Fina
23 K-Rep
24 ABC
25 Habib AG Zurich
26 Development Bank of Kenya

Tier 3 (assets below 6 billion shillings)
27 Giro
28 Guardian
29 Southern Credit
30 Gulf African
31 Consolidated
32 Habib Bank
33 Victoria
34 Equatorial
35 Fidelity
36 Credit
37 Transnational
38 Middle East
39 First Community
40 Paramount Universal

41 Oriental
42 Dubai
43 City Finance