Abraham Ongenge Breaks Down Stanbic's FY2025: Credit Recovery, 50% More FX Volume, and a Bigger Bet on Kenya

• Three Tailwinds Hit at Once

• The Revenue Surface Is Getting Wider

• FX: The Volume Tells the Real Story

• Inside the Loan Book

• Betting on Kenya

• South Sudan: 2% of the P&L, 100% Strategic

Stanbic Holdings PLC closed 2025 with a fourth quarter that bent the year's trajectory. At the bank's Full Year Financial Results Briefing at JW Marriott, Westlands, Abraham Ongenge, Stanbic Bank Kenya's Head of Personal and Private Banking, laid out exactly what happened, why, and where the bank is pointing next.

Three Tailwinds Hit at Once

Ongenge traced the Q4 acceleration to three forces converging in the same window.

The first was macro.

Kenya's private sector started borrowing again. Stanbic was ready.

The second was deal flow. The bank closed key corporate and investment banking transactions in the quarter, directly boosting income streams. These were not routine. They were the kind of mandates that move a P&L line.

The third was risk repricing. An improving economic outlook meant Stanbic set aside less for expected losses.

When your provisions drop because the environment is genuinely healing, not because you are loosening standards, that is the cleanest form of earnings recovery.

The Revenue Surface Is Getting Wider

Ongenge was explicit about what comes next: diversification, not just growth.

Stanbic Bank is building new propositions across:

• Insurance

• Asset management

• CAD solutions

All designed to widen the surface area of revenue beyond traditional lending.

Digital is the delivery layer. "Including servicing our clients through digital platforms," he added. Stanbic is engineering itself toward a model where more revenue comes from more products through more channels. Interest income, while dominant, no longer has to carry the entire story.

FX: The Volume Tells the Real Story

Foreign exchange revenue took a visible hit at Stanbic Bank Kenya. But not because clients left.

"Whenever you have less volatility, which is what we've seen in the market, you then have margins being a little bit tighter," Ongenge explained. A stable shilling compresses the spread. That is arithmetic, not weakness.

The volume picture told the real story. Stanbic processed more than 50 percent more FX transactions than the prior year.

The franchise grew. The market shrank the margin. When volatility returns, and in emerging markets it always does, Stanbic will have a larger client base generating flow.