The money had just hit Sylvia Wanjiru’s account when her phone rang. It was a million-shilling ($7,773) payment from a client, and the caller claimed to be from her bank’s customer service. He spoke confidently, offering to “help confirm the transaction.”

“At first I thought it was just a coincidence,” Wanjiru recalls. But when the same thing happened again, she realised someone was watching her transactions and reported it to the bank.

Her parents were not so fortunate. Pension payments of KES 34,000 ($263) and KES 2,500 ($19) from a mobile money wallet disappeared after they called a number that texted: “*** BANK. Dear Customer, your account has been SUSPENDED. Please contact 010****366 within 24 hours.”  

The money was long gone by the time they rushed to the bank and mobile money provider. Wanjiru’s experience is one among many others. Across Kenya, customers report similar encounters, including calls moments after cash deposits or transfers and text messages disguised as official alerts followed by withdrawals.

The speed and timing point to a possibility that the fraudsters work hand in glove with bank staff and mobile money agents with access to customer information.

Rising cyber-threats

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), in its Financial Sector Stability Report 2025, in August reports cases of cyber fraud in the banking sector more than doubled in 2024, rising from 153 to 353, with the amount exposed increasing to KES 1.9 billion ($14.7 million) and losses nearly quadrupling to KES 1.5 billion ($11.6 million).

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) reported 7.9 billion cyber threats in the first eight months of 2025, double the figure for 2024. CBK said attacks rose from 7.7 million in 2016 to billions due to Kenya’s economy’s rapid digitisation.

The regulator insists that despite rising risks, Kenya’s banking sector remains “resilient,” able to withstand shocks from successful cyber-attacks. However, accounts from victims, bank staff, and law enforcement suggest that most losses of funds are inside jobs.

A former compliance officer described a shadow industry in Nairobi neighbourhoods like Utawala and Ruiru, which thrives on mobile banking fraud. The setups look like call centre outsourcing hubs with rows of desks, computers, and phones.

“There are bank staff who monitor accounts, tip off the fraudsters, and within minutes, money is pushed into mule accounts,” says one ex-risk and compliance at a major bank. The cash is laundered through mobile money wallets and withdrawn at agents, or some are pushed to crypto wallets.

With 67% youth unemployment, workers are recruited through job ads for “customer service” roles, only to discover that the scripts involve impersonating bank officials or mobile money agents. And because it’s quick cash, many stay.

Pay is per successful hit, which means the more money they steal from customers, the more they earn. Corrupt police officers, according to the former compliance officer, are paid to protect operations, tip off the syndicates before raids, or frustrate investigations.

“It’s a big operation, more than you can imagine,” the former officer says. “The real people behind these schemes are known to some in Kenya Police’s serious crimes division.”

Targets the biggest banks

The people behind the schemes design them for scale, according to an investigations officer at Banking Fraud Investigations Unit (BFIU)—a unit under the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI)—who has handled such cases and asked not to be named. They target banks with vast retail business like Equity Bank, KCB Group, and Co-operative Bank— Kenya’s biggest retail lenders with a combined customer base of over 50 million.  With such big operations, the fraudsters hide in the noise of millions of daily transactions.

Rural pensioners, urban traders, and salaried workers with predictable income streams make easy prey.

“It’s a numbers game,” says the BFIU officer. “The bigger the bank, the more likely someone will slip.”

Most of these frauds are not violent, but sometimes they turn deadly. In April, a teacher in Mumias was trailed and killed after withdrawing KES 285,000 ($206). Detectives believe two bank tellers may have passed on the information to robbers, pointing to insider collusion with criminals.

There are numerous reports of customers being trailed after withdrawing or depositing large sums at banks and mobile money agents across the country.

In 2024, Equity Bank reported it lost KES 1.5 billion ($11.6 million) in what was initially described by news outlets as a sophisticated hacking attack. However, investigators later alleged that bank staff colluded with property developers and lawyers to siphon off the bank’s money from the salary suspense account in thousands of small, salary-like transfers to avoid detection.

Deeper rot

On social media, many Kenyans brush off mobile banking fraud as the work of prisoners with smuggled phones when they are operations run by people living among them. While some operations enjoy corrupt officials’ backing, the BFIU officer concedes that the regulators are overstretched.

“Mobile money and banks process millions of payments daily, and that’s why some of the cases even go unnoticed,” says the officer.

However, faced with mounting fraud, most Kenyan banks have begun housecleaning to restore customer confidence. KCB Group, NCBA, Absa, and Co-operative Bank are some lenders that have recently fired staff over misconduct.

In May, Equity Group took a bolder step, announcing publicly that it was firing 1,500 staff to protect the bank’s image and its customers.

“The moment of reckoning has come,” Equity Bank CEO James Mwangi said in May. “It doesn’t matter how many I will lose. I don’t even care. I will protect the customers and the bank. I will be ruthless.”

The bank has since extended the exercise to its subsidiary in Uganda, which has also suffered staff-linked fraud in the past two years.

Blurring of lines

The lines between cyber fraud, insider theft, and organised crime are blurred. According to the BFIU officer, most victims never report, whether from embarrassment, the small sums involved, or the hassle of filing a complaint with the police, making the CBK’s figure of KES1.5 billion an understatement.

The BFIU investigator says the schemes rarely fall into specific categories. A phishing text may be the start, but a bank teller can pass on stolen data, laundered through mobile money, and protected by police officers. Each stage blurs the line between cyber-attacks, insider theft, and organised racketeering.

The consequence, the former compliance officer warns, is erosion of trust. Many customers, unsure whether the fraudsters are hackers or someone inside their bank, choose not to report. Anxious to reassure shareholders and depositors, lenders frame the losses as “cyber threats” even when investigations show human hands.

This gap between the official narrative and what victims experience is where the danger lies. The BFUI investigator says that as Kenya’s financial system grows, the weakest link may be the people inside—tellers, agents, and officers with access to real-time customer records.  

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CRDB Bank, Tanzania’s biggest bank by assets, has completed a migration of its core banking system from Fusion Banking Essence (FBE), owned by London-based Finastra, to Temenos T24, a move the lender says was necessary to keep pace with regional competitors and prepare for expansion outside East Africa.

CRDB’s chief executive, Abdulmajid Nsekela, told TechCabal that the system migration—which occurred in the first weekend of September—is crucial to the bank’s expansion plans. CRDB already operates in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and is finalising arrangements to enter Dubai, where it expects to serve both diaspora and cross-border clients.

“You cannot provide services in all these countries without having a robust system that safeguards customer information and enables transactions with high efficiency,” Nsekela said.

CRDB joins a growing list of African lenders running on Temenos T24, the Swiss-built, front-to-back core banking platform used by institutions like Kenya’s  KCB Group and Stanbic Bank, which operate across multiple jurisdictions. Such systems are increasingly vital as regional banks integrate operations and compete for cross-border clients.

Nsekela said the upgraded platform now supports transactions in multiple languages and currencies, from Swahili and English in Tanzania to French, Kirundi, and Arabic in other markets.

Core banking migrations remain fraught exercises. Unlike front-end app upgrades, they involve the wholesale transfer of millions of sensitive customer records. In markets where trust in banks can be fragile, even short disruptions risk denting reputations.

CRDB’s 72-hour migration exercise experienced some glitches with customers reporting discrepancies in balances, which the bank attributed to large data transfers between the systems.

The bank’s investment is a continuation of East African lenders’ efforts to modernise their technology backbones. KCB, Equity Group, DTB, and NCBA Group already run multi-market operations on Temenos T24 or similar systems, enabling faster product rollouts across jurisdictions.

By joining their ranks, CRDB hopes to compete for corporate clients and cross-border business as it marks its 30th anniversary. The Dubai expansion is expected to target diaspora remittances and trade finance between the Gulf and East Africa.

The Bank of Tanzania (BoT) is also pushing local banks to upgrade their systems as part of wider financial sector reforms. 

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In 2024, the pay gap between Kenya’s corporate boardrooms and ordinary workers widened further. Bank executives continued to dominate the top of the earnings pyramid, with the country’s highest-paid CEOs taking home hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries, bonuses, stock options, and benefits, even as many companies trimmed staff or froze junior pay to preserve profits amid high interest rates, sluggish credit growth, and mounting economic uncertainty.

An analysis by TechCabal of the 12 highest-paid CEOs in Kenya’s listed companies shows just how lucrative corporate leadership remains. It also reflects how banks—buying government securities and cutting lending to the real economy—have stayed highly profitable and richly rewarding for their top management.

Financial sector chiefs took home Kenya’s lion’s share of corporate pay. Bank CEOs pocketed nearly KES1.2 billion ($9.3 million), led by Paul Russo, John Gachora, and Gideon Muriuki. Safaricom’s Peter Ndegwa, however, out-earned them all, further cementing the telecom giant’s dominance of the East African market.

The earnings packages, disclosed in annual reports, come amid a growing mismatch between executive compensation and economic performance. While the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) warned repeatedly that banks were not directing credit to the productive economy, compensation for senior bank leaders continued to rise sharply, in some cases by over 40%.

Kenya’s banking sector recorded KES262.3 billion ($2 billion) in pre-tax profits in 2024. Yet much of that came from locking into high-yield government securities rather than lending to the real economy.

1. Peter Ndegwa, Safaricom — KES 294.2 million ($2,284,516)

Safaricom’s chief executive, Peter Ndegwa, is the highest-paid CEO in corporate Kenya for the fiscal year ending March 2025, earning KES 294.2 million in total compensation, a 17% increase from the previous year. 

His pay package included KES 98.7 million ($766,423) in salary, a bonus of KES 116.7 million ($906,200), non-cash benefits valued at KES 33.5 million ($260,133), and KES 45.3 million ($351,700) in performance shares under the company’s Executive Performance Share Award Plan (EPSAP).

The payout came as the telecoms giant returned to growth, reporting an 11% rise in net profit to KES 69.8 billion ($542 million), driven by strong performances in mobile money, data services, and narrowing losses in its Ethiopia operations. Safaricom remains East Africa’s most profitable company and one of its most generous boardrooms.

2. Paul Russo, KCB Group — KES 250.2 million ($1,942,850)

KCB Group CEO Paul Russo’s total compensation soared by 40.8% in 2024, making him the highest-paid bank executive in the country. His KES 250.2 million payout came in a year when KCB reported KES 60 billion ($466 million) record profits, primarily from risk-free lending to the government through Treasury instruments.

The bank, however, also raised its loan-loss provisions to buffer against rising defaults, a nod to the financial strain facing many households and SMEs. Despite Russo’s windfall, KCB cut its directors’ compensation by 20%, a rare move in an otherwise lucrative boardroom year.

3. John Gachora, NCBA Group — KES 208.4 million ($1,618,264)

NCBA Group CEO John Gachora earned KES 208.4 million in 2024—a 25.7% increase from the previous year. While his pay placed him third among NSE-listed executives, NCBA’s boardroom was the most expensive, with directors pocketing a record KES 660.2 million ($5,126,883)— up 54.4%.

The bank’s KES 22 billion ($171 million) profitability was primarily driven by investments in Treasury bills and bonds, with cautious private-sector lending still in play.

4. Gideon Muriuki, Co-operative Bank — KES 172.5 million ($1,339,509)

Gideon Muriuki, Co-operative Bank’s long-serving CEO, took home KES 172.5 million in 2024, a 11.7% increase from 2023. The lender’s profitability remained strong, reporting KES 25.4 billion ($197 million) in 2024, giving directors a 28.1% jump in total remuneration to KES 473.4 million ($3,676,036).

But the windfall at the top contrasted sharply with a freeze in junior staff salaries and an ongoing push to reduce operating costs by migrating services to digital channels.

5. Kariuki Ngari, Standard Chartered Kenya — KES 174.4 million ($1,354,250)

Standard Chartered CEO Kariuki Ngari saw one of the steepest pay raises among banking bosses — a 43.5% jump — after the bank posted KES 28.2 billion ($219 million) record earnings in 2024. His KES 174.4 million package stood out in a year when the bank continued restructuring through attrition and digitisation.

Directors’ compensation also rose 17.4% to KES 378 million ($2,935,100), reinforcing the perception that executive and boardroom rewards remain insulated from broader belt-tightening.

6. James Mwangi, Equity Group — KES 166.3 million ($1,291,350)

James Mwangi, the long-time CEO of Equity Bank, saw his compensation rise modestly by 4.7% to KES 166.3 million. Despite the slower growth in its pay, Equity remains Kenya’s second most profitable bank and a major player in the regional financial sector. In 2024, Equity reported a 10.8% increase in net profit to KES 46.5 billion ($361 million).

He holds a direct stake of about 3.38% in the bank, making him one of its top individual shareholders, further linking his wealth to the group’s fortunes.

7. Abdi Mohammed, Absa Bank Kenya — KES 109.8 million ($852,555)

Absa Bank Kenya CEO Abdi Mohammed earned KES 109.8 million ($852,555) in 2024, marking a substantial 39.8% increase in pay. The bank saw strong growth in both interest and non-interest income, allowing it to reward its top brass handsomely.

At the same time, Absa has quietly trimmed operational expenses, suggesting an efficiency drive underpinning its performance.

8. Patrick Mweheire, Stanbic Bank Kenya — KES 95.5 million ($741,600)

Stanbic Bank CEO Patrick Mweheire earned KES 95.5 million ($741,600) in 2024, a 12.8% increase from the year before. Like many of his peers, Mweheire presided over a year of cautious lending, focusing on blue-chip clients and government securities.

The bank’s board also saw its pay rise by 17.4%, adding to an industry-wide pattern of reward concentration at the top.

9. Jane Karuku, EABL — KES 83.49 million ($648,323)

EABL managing director Jane Karuku earned KES 83.49 million ($648,323) in 2024, with her salary accounting for nearly 66% of the total. The rest comprised bonuses and stock options. The brewer’s profit grew 20% to KES 8.1 billion ($63 million), amid a challenging consumer environment.

Karuku remains one of the few women leading a top NSE-listed company, underlining the enduring gender gap in Kenya’s executive suites.

10. Kihara Maina, I&M Bank — KES 69.3 million ($538,127)

I&M Bank CEO Kihara Maina was among only two bank bosses to see a pay cut in 2024. His compensation dropped by 9.7% to KES 69.3 million ($538,127), and the bank also trimmed board pay.

I&M reported a profit of KES 15.3 billion ($119 million) for the year, with a continued focus on high-net-worth clients and conservative risk management.

11. James Mworia, Centum Investment Company — KES 64.52 million ($501,000)

Centum CEO James Mworia received KES 64.52 million ($501,000) in total compensation in 2024. While modest compared to his peers in banking and telecoms, his pay still outpaces average Kenyan earnings by several orders of magnitude.

Mworia’s remuneration came in a year when Centum reported KES 812 million ($6.3 million) in net profits, a 68% drop from 2023.

12. Nasim Devji, Diamond Trust Bank (DTB) — KES 62.9 million ($488,430)

Veteran DTB chief executive Nasim Devji also saw a decline in her compensation — a 4.2% drop to KES 62.9 million ($488,430). DTB’s strategy focused on regional integration, conservative lending, and cost controls. Despite her longstanding tenure and influence in the sector, Devji’s pay remained among the lowest in the top tier of Kenya’s banking elite. The bank reported a net profit of KES 7.64 billion ($59 million).

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