One of Kenya’s largest Islamic lenders, First Community Bank on Friday 4th November began notifying its employees that it will in the next two weeks lay off part of its staff citing the recent banking amendment act signed into law by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The lender doesn’t know how many jobs are being cut but noted that it had hired an external firm to “review and identify those areas where staff reductions will be made without interfering with the operations of the bank.
“Over the past three months, the board and myself have been closely monitoring our implementation of the transformational agenda and we have concluded that operational costs need to be further reduced. Unfortunately, this means that the bank will have to reduce staff costs going forward” read a statement sent to the employees from the CEO Fazal M. Saib.
Read; Sidian Bank To Retrench Over 108 employees at a cost of Sh 70Million
According to Fazal, the exercise by the external firm will identify the number of staff needed for each function taking into consideration the employee’s skill level and overall attitude.
“The list of staff that will be impacted will be finalized in the next two weeks and communication will be made to them individually” read the notification.
News of the layoffs by First Community Bank comes less than two moths after two other Kenyan lenders also announced a move to send some of its employees on early retirement. Family Bank in early October announced a “voluntary early retirement” program for its staff who are on permanent and pensionable terms while Sidian Bank from Monday 24th of the same month said it had began retrenching more than 108 employees at a cost of Sh70 million.
On the other hand, Equity Bank during its half financial results release last week disclosed that it had gotten rid of 400 employees in the nine months to September owing to “natural attrition.” The bank’s CEO Dr James Mwangi said they had freezed recruitment and were focused on digital banking.
