It is a little over four years now since the central Bank of Kenya placed Imperial Bank under statutory management.
Four years on, depositors in the collapsed imperial bank are yet to fully access their deposits in the collapsed bank.
The Kenya Depositors Insurance Corporation however says it is in talks are with the KCB group to acquire more assets in Imperial Bank that will enable depositors to get more access to their money.
The KDIC is also reaching to more banks to take up the assets and liabilities of Imperial Bank, which has been under statutory management for four years now.
In October 2015, the central bank of Kenya placed Imperial Bank under receivership following the revelation of massive insider fraud.
Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC) took over management of the troubled bank for what the CBK has hoped would be a period of 1 year.
Four years on, Imperial Bank remains under statutory management with its depositors yet to fully access their deposits; a process that the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation now says has been long and painful.
Depositors in the collapsed bank have so far been able to access 35% of their deposits, courtesy of KCB group’s partial buyout of the bank’s assets.
KDIC is also in the process of reaching out to more banks to take over Imperial Bank’s assets and liabilities.
Imperial BANK is among 3 local commercial banks that were placed under receivership between 2015 and 2016; the other two being chase bank (which has been bought out and rebranded to SBM Bank), and Dubai Bank Kenya, which is currently in liquidation.
Three years on, the KDIC is confident that such bank collapses will not recur.
While the 2018 bank supervision report indicates that Kenya’s banking industry remains resilient, concern abounds over the increase in non-performing loans which increased by 19.6% to Ksh.316.7 billion in December 2018.
Consequently, the banking industry’s asset quality, which is measured by the ratio of gross non-performing loans to gross loans, deteriorated from 12.3% in December 2017 to 12.7% in December 2018; a pointer to the tougher economic environment that banks in Kenya are now operating in.
