Sidian Bank CEO Chege Thumbi has said that deepening the lender's engagement with SACCOs has been a key engine driving the bank’s rapid growth and its rise to Tier II status.
- •According to Thumbi, the bank now partners with more than 120 SACCOs across the country, offering different products and solutions.
- •Sidian Bank has reported a major leap in profitability in recent years, with its nine-month after-tax profit rising 470% to KSh 1.47 billion, up from KSh 257.6 million a year earlier
- •The lender is planning to grow its footprint from 30 currently to more than 100 branches in the coming years.
“Our shareholders are putting additional capital, and we continue to see growth in both capital and balance sheet,” Thumbi said at the annual leaders summit of the Kenya Teachers Saccos Association (KETSA) in Kisumu.
“In our journey of building strong partnerships with Saccos, they play a very important role in the growth of Sidian Bank,” he added.
There is a broader convergence between banks provide regulatory-heavy services such as trade instruments and liquidity support, while SACCOs offer grassroots distribution and trusted community networks.
For KETSA, which represents teachers’ SACCOs across the country, the summit focused on innovation and repositioning cooperatives as one-stop financial hubs.
Kenya has over 300,000 teachers whose families and extended dependents form a financial ecosystem estimated at up to five million people — presenting significant potential beyond traditional savings and loans.
KETSA leaders emphasized the need for SACCOs to adopt technology, attract younger members, and introduce value-added services such as health savings, insurance pooling and sector-based support models.
