Listed state reinsurer Kenya Reinsurance Corporation posted a profit after tax of KSh 3.92 billion for the year ended 31 December 2025, an 11.6% decline from KSh 4.44 billion a year earlier.
- •A near-total collapse in underwriting profitability exposed the corporation's growing dependence on investment returns to stay in the black.
- •The insurance service result, the purest measure of how well a reinsurer is actually doing its core job, fell 96.3% to KSh 108 million from KSh 2.95 billion in 2024, meaning the corporation generated essentially nothing from underwriting across an entire financial year.
- • The severity of the drop is sharpened by context: the result was KSh 677 million in FY2023 and KSh 2.95 billion in FY2024, a three-year series that points to volatility in pricing and retrocession costs.
Insurance service expenses climbed 6% to KSh 11.12 billion while total insurance revenue contracted 9.5% to KSh 17.07 billion, and net expenses from reinsurance contracts nearly doubled to KSh 1.35 billion, compressing what little margin remained.
Investment income filled the gap, though not quite in the way the headline number suggests. Net investment income surged 41.4% to KSh 6.60 billion, but that figure is heavily flattered by a foreign exchange swing: the corporation moved from a KSh 1.68 billion FX loss in 2024 to a KSh 248 million loss in 2025, a near KSh 1.44 billion improvement in a single line. Strip that out and the underlying trajectory is far less dramatic, with the core interest revenue line essentially flat at KSh 4.54 billion versus KSh 4.50 billion the prior year.
Zooming out makes the dependence more visible: net investment income has more than doubled from KSh 3.08 billion in FY2016 to KSh 6.60 billion in FY2025, while PAT over the same nine years has moved only from KSh 3.29 billion to KSh 3.92 billion. The gap between those two trajectories is where the underwriting value has been leaking.
Kenya Re's management will lead investor conversations with total comprehensive income, which more than doubled to KSh 5.68 billion from KSh 2.34 billion. But that number is driven almost entirely by unrealized revaluation gains on equities and positive FX translation movements on foreign operations and associate reserves, none of which are operational and none of which are cash.
Operating cash flow collapsed 80.2% to KSh 876 million from KSh 4.43 billion, the weakest figure in at least a decade. For context, it was KSh 3.64 billion in FY2020, KSh 3.28 billion in FY2021, and KSh 2.04 billion in FY2023, a year that itself represented a sharp step down. FY2025 is not a one-year event. Underlying cash from operations before interest received ran negative at KSh 1.38 billion, with the reported figure rescued entirely by KSh 4.49 billion in interest received.
Against a declared dividend of KSh 0.15 per share on 13.999 billion shares, implying a total payout of approximately KSh 2.10 billion, Kenya Re's FY2025 operating cash generation does not cover its distributions. That payout will flow through the FY2026 cash flow statement, where it will land alongside whatever the underwriting book produces next year.
Total assets grew 8.1% to KSh 72.21 billion, continuing a decade-long expansion from KSh 38.49 billion in FY2016, an 87.6% increase over nine years. Government securities alone account for KSh 26.51 billion, or 36.7% of the total. Add KSh 13.997 billion in deposits with financial institutions and over half the balance sheet is sitting in fixed income and cash-equivalent instruments. Total equity has grown from KSh 24.13 billion in FY2016 to KSh 54.51 billion today. The balance sheet is compounding. The underwriting result is not.
Group Managing Director Dr Hillary Wachinga spent two months suspended between September and November 2025 over allegations of unprocedural staff dismissals, before the board reinstated him without disclosing the findings of its internal review. His return coincided with a push to amend Kenya Re's Articles of Association, proposing permanent government board control regardless of shareholding and a six-year maximum tenure for the chief executive, a cap that would directly govern Wachinga's remaining term.
President Ruto simultaneously announced that private investors would receive proportional board representation for the first time, a reform that sits in visible tension with the parallel move to entrench state dominance through structural share class changes.
Kenya Re attempted in January 2026 to cancel a tender for independent valuation of its property portfolio, even after its own internal committee had recommended award, citing an unidentified phone call to a tender committee member and a visit by five unidentified individuals to its offices. The Public Procurement Regulatory Authority blocked the cancellation and ordered the process reinstated. For a corporation whose KSh 13.42 billion investment property portfolio anchors a significant portion of its balance sheet equity, the circumstances of that attempted cancellation remain unresolved
