(NAIROBI, KENYA) – The number of Kenyan bank accounts holding more than KES500,000 ($3,870 / GBP2,870) rose by 5.7% last year, fresh central bank data shows, as top earners and firms increased their savings amid widening income inequality.
The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) data shows high value accounts rose to 781,977 as at December 2025 from 739,803 a year earlier, reversing a decline of 2,753 accounts reported between 2023 and 2024.
The increase came in a year when the economy grew at a slower pace of 4.6%, down from 4.7% in 2024.
The share of high quality depositors accounted for 0.97% of all 80.68 million bank accounts, offering a glimpse into Kenya’s growing income inequality, where wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small segment of the population.
Kenya’s economy has grown by an average of 5.0% annually over the past decade, but the benefits have not been equally distributed and the gap between rich and poor is rising, analysts say.
The number of super rich in Kenya is among the fastest growing in Africa, yet the economic benefits have not trickled down to the majority of citizens quickly enough.
Banks’ high value accounts are split between a few wealthy individuals and a combination of private and public enterprises, pension funds and fund managers.
The share of high value accounts would have been smaller had the total number of deposit accounts not fallen from 114.24 million in 2024, following a clean up of inactive accounts.
More people are also opting to open transactional accounts through digital and mobile platforms, growing the number of lower value accounts at a much faster pace compared with the larger ones.
Mobile banking accounts also allow users easier access to credit and savings facilities from banks, adding to their growing popularity as some people opt to open multiple mobile accounts.
Riding on this shift to digital banking platforms, NCBA, Equity Bank and KCB remained the banks with the largest number of deposit accounts in the industry at 36.3 million, 13.8 million and 12.3 million respectively, together accounting for 77.5% of the industry’s total accounts.
But their share of high value accounts trailed smaller banks such as Citibank, Victoria Commercial Bank and Bank of India.
KCB operates a mobile banking platform known as KCB M-Pesa, while NCBA runs M-Shwari, both offering loans and savings in partnership with Safaricom’s M-Pesa.
The share of bank accounts with over half a million shillings at NCBA, Equity Bank and KCB stood at 0.1%, 1.0% and 1.1% respectively.
Some tier two and tier three banks, however, held a larger share of quality accounts compared with their total number of accounts, a result of their policy of catering to niche clients.
Citibank Kenya led with 61.3% of its 2,223 total accounts holding balances of more than KES500,000 ($3,870 / GBP2,870), followed by Victoria Commercial Bank at 53.6% out of 8,769 accounts and Bank of India at 51.2% of its 12,702 accounts.
The KES500,000 ($3,870 / GBP2,870) deposit threshold is an important peg for depositors, given that it is the upper limit of refundable deposits in the event of a bank’s collapse.
The Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC), an independent State agency that manages deposit refunds for collapsed banks, in July 2020 raised the compensation ceiling for depositors in collapsed banks to KES500,000 ($3,870 / GBP2,870) from the previous KES100,000 ($774 / GBP574), to ease discomfort with smaller lenders following the closure of three such banks in 2015 and 2016.
This increase in the compensation threshold was the first in 30 years, making it necessary to keep up with inflation and the growth in the volume of cash held in banks over the three decades.
KDIC is funded by charging commercial banks a small percentage of their deposits in the form of insurance.
The wealthy have, however, been accumulating their savings at a faster pace compared with smaller depositors, leading to a larger volume of deposits falling outside the insurance window.
Banks held KES6.12 trillion ($47.4 billion / GBP35.1 billion) in customer deposits in December 2025, growing 11.7% from KES5.48 trillion ($42.4 billion / GBP31.4 billion) in 2024.
As per the latest report published on Tuesday, deposits valued at KES1.195 trillion ($9.25 billion / GBP6.86 billion) were insured, equivalent to 19.5% of the industry’s total deposits.
This means 80%, or KES4.92 trillion ($38.1 billion / GBP28.2 billion), of deposits fell above the insurable threshold, effectively representing the cash held in high quality accounts.
The deposit insurance scheme coverage is also just shy of the 20% mark considered best practice by the International Association of Deposit Insurers (IADI).
The last time coverage met the global standard was in 2022 at 20.6%, when total deposits stood at KES4.76 trillion ($36.8 billion / GBP27.3 billion).