A report showing the number of local bank accounts holding Ksh 500,000 and above has been going viral on social media.
According to the data contained in a 2023 Bank Supervision report, NCBA Bank recorded the largest number of accounts with more than Ksh 500,000 at 416,481.
Coming in at the second and third place are Equity Bank Kenya and KCB Bank Kenya with 124,098 and 113,368 accounts respectively.
Taking the fourth and fifth position are Co-Operative Bank of Kenya with 86,033 accounts and ABSA Kenya with 59,326 accounts.
Other institutions in the top ten list of bank accounts with more than Ksh 500,000 are Diamond Trust Bank (K) (58,996), Standard Chartered Bank (K) (38,998), I&M Bank (31,225), Bank of Baroda (29,244) and Stanbic Bank (25,645).
Family Bank, National Bank of Kenya, Prime Bank, Gulf African Bank and Bank of India have a total of 69,780 accounts with more than Ksh 500,000.
Other notable banks including HFC, SBM Bank, Credit Bank, Citibank N.A, DIB Bank Kenya, Ecobank and Sidian Bank have 24,976 customers with more than Ksh 500,000 in their bank accounts.
Elsewhere, in 2022, data showed that about 1.8 million bank accounts in Kenya had more than Ksh 100,000 by December 2021, a reflection of the country’s poor savings culture.
This was just 2.5 per cent of the 67.2 million accounts that were active in 53 financial institutions including commercial banks and microfinance banks.
The report showed that, overall, there was a drop in the number of accounts in the review period.
With total deposits of Ksh 4.44 trillion it means that, on average, an account in Kenya holds Ksh 66,071.
However, there was an increase in the number of accounts with more than Ksh 100,000 by 72,724.
The increase might have been due to the recovery of the economy with a lot of people and businesses that had been negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic returning to normalcy.
