Earlier this week I received a copy of the H1 2017 investors deck for the KCB Bank Group (KCB). The deck makes for interesting reading in terms of how well its doing as far as its digital and mobile channels are performing for the first half of 2017.

In H1 2016, mobile accounted for 50% of KCB’s transaction and in H1 2017 this percentage rose to 57%. This effectively means that the majority of banking transactions at KCB are now mobile meaning that if we look at this growth trajectory it will probably be over 60% by the end of 2017. 

In terms of mobile banking transactions per month per customer, this was 5.6 transactions in H1 2016 and grew to 7.8 transactions per customer per month in H1 2017. This represents a growth of 39% which is impressive any way that you look at it? Basically it means that customers are increasingly doing more mobile banking transactions than ever before at KCB. Mobile is also the most active channel of all when it comes to all of those available to customers at KCB.

However, evident of consumers growing preference for digital channels transactions at branches dropped from 22% to 14% and ATM transactions also dropped from 12% to 10%. The growth trajectory for mobile channels in particular is super impressive and it shows that the KCB is on a tear in terms of digitally disrupting itself to remain relevant to consumers and the marketplace in general.

When it comes to channel volumes, mobile grew from Kes. 76B in H1 2016 to Kes. 116B in H1 2017. This is quite simply stupendous growth as it means a jump of 52.6% in around a year? ATM transactions concurrently dropped from Kes. 77B to Kes. 74B in the same period suggesting that generally there is a increased preference for mobile banking over cash transactions.

The other interesting insights on KCB’s digital channels performance shows that whilst branches saw a drop of 25% in activity between H1 2016 and H1 2017, Internet banking grew an impressive 172% over the same period. It seems to me that although mobile banking is clearly leading the way, Internet banking, though nascent, is growing rapidly as well.

Lastly, where mobile loans are concerned, KCB disbursed 2.6 million mobile loans worth Kes. 5.4B in H1 2016 compared to 4.1 million mobile loans worth Kes. 12.6B in H1 2017. To put this into context, mobile loans disbursed grew by 57.6% and the value of mobile loans grew by 133%. It goes without saying that KCB is evolving into a mobile-first bank that is shedding its legacy business channels in the process.

You can download the complete KCB H1 2017 investor deck here.