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Annastacia Kimtai

RETAIL DIRECTOR, KCB BANK KENYA

Mrs Kimtai has risen through the ranks, becoming Retail Director, KCB Bank Kenya PLC, in 2011. KCB is Kenya’s largest and most profitable Bank, with over 28.1 million customers, 205 branches, 423 ATMs, 22,916 merchants and agents, 5,104 employees, 1.8 plus social media followers and with an asset base of KES 858.5 Bn. The bank also operates merchant and agency banking model, to increase its footprints.

Annastacia Kimtai is an astute career banker with over 23 years’ experience in banking, 10 of those being in senior management roles in strategic leadership and business development. She previously held roles including Regional Business Manager and Branch Manager.

Within the KCB Bank Group, she is reputed as an astute champion for financial inclusion, who runs the biggest banking retail chain in East and Central Africa.

 Mrs. Kimtai, a devote practicing Roman Catholic and former national leader of its powerful Catholic Women Association (CWA) network, has a proven history of successful work with cross functional teams to deliver exceptional results in growing retail business market share and improving bottom line by optimizing operational processes while mitigating business risks. Annastacia is also proficient in training, mentoring, coaching, and developing careers of highly engaged retail teams.

She has over the time gained immense experience and competence across various disciplines such as business growth, leadership and talent development, business risk and compliance, change management, channel optimization, card business, mobile banking and agency banking, among others.

As the custodian of KCB’s retail banking franchise in Kenya, Mrs. Kimtai has seen significant growth in the network’s, with her goal aligned with KCB Bank Group’s vision, ‘to be the preferred financial solutions provider in Africa, with global reach. She aligns her customer care to the bank’s purpose, ‘simplifying your world to enable your progress’.

Her personality replicates the bank’s core values: She is inspirational, carries herself with poise and simplicity despite her heavy responsibilities and the power she fuses. Mrs. Kimtai is professionally very friendly, on contact, to a fault: perhaps an extension of her Marian devotion.

In her tenure at the Bank, Annastacia has championed financial inclusion for customers at the bottom of the pyramid by developing products and services to serve this niche. She is currently leading the Women’s Proposition at KCB where the bank is enabling the progress of Women in Business. She has supported the revenue growth of the Women Proposition and so far, they have managed to open over 250,000 new accounts and issued loans worth over Kshs. 20 Bn to help the women scale up their businesses.

The supporting of women is mainly in the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), by giving them tailor made services like long term loans and overdrafts, asset finance and insurance premium financing, mortgages, local purchase orders (LPOs) and invoice discounting, bank guarantees and credit cards.

Annastacia also runs the Inua Jamii senior citizens’ scheme, which is a tax-financed pension-tested social pension offering universal pension coverage for all citizens of Kenya once they attain 70 years of age. The Kenyan government has been disbursing funds through KCB Bank since 2015. For instance, in 2020, over Kshs.11.2 billion cash transfers were disbursed through the bank.

Mrs. Kimtai is also a board member of the KCB Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the conglomerate, which manages a number of initiatives that supports youth empowerment, tackling youth unemployment by creating jobs through technical and vocational skills development and vocational scholarships in the informal sector trades and ICT, including the 2jiajiri programme, the word coined from the Swahili word meaning ‘let us employ ourselves’.

Annastacia holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) in Strategic Management, Master of Arts (MA) degree in Rural Economics and Co-operation and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. She is a Certified Executive Coach from the Academy of Executive Coaching (AoEC). She holds a Certificate in Senior Executive Program for Africa (SEPA) from Harvard University.

Humble to a fault, Mrs Kimtai spends time between her official duties and responsibilities mentoring and counselling her colleagues at work, on matters that go beyond the normal call of duty. She is also a loving wife and mother and sets aside time to be with her family and friends, in addition to nurturing her spiritual life as a devout Catholic.