The Nairobi-headquartered conglomerate — which held assets exceeding KSh 1.80 trillion (approximately USD 13.9 billion) as of December 2024 — is restructuring to spin off its technology and data divisions into an independent entity by late 2026, aiming to decouple its high-growth fintech operations from its core banking business, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the deliberations remain private.
The planned separation would affect Azenia, the group’s wholly owned technological affiliate based in Nairobi that develops digital solutions across the group, as well as Finserve Africa, its mobile-network-operator subsidiary that had more than 1.5 million Equitel subscribers as of December 2024, the sources said.
Equity Group did not respond to requests for comment.
A bank that already runs on digital rails
The strategic rationale is grounded in hard numbers. By the close of fiscal year 2024, 85.9% of the group transactions by count were processed through digital platforms, representing more than 57% of the total value of transactions handled by the bank customers. Meanwhile, the group profit before tax climbed 17% to KSh 60.7 billion, with revenues growing 6% to KSh 193.8 billion for the year.
In other words, Equity Group is already operating less like a traditional brick-and-mortar bank and more like a technology company with a banking licence. The proposed spinoff would formalise that reality by giving the tech arm the structural independence to attract outside capital, forge partnerships and scale beyond the group own balance sheet constraints.
— James Mwangi, Group CEO, Equity Group Holdings, Inclusive FinTech Forum 2026, Kigali
Group Chief Executive James Mwangi made that case publicly at the Inclusive FinTech Forum 2026 in Kigali earlier this month, where he participated in a high-level panel on Africa digital financial future alongside global financial leaders. His remarks came just days before Reuters first reported the planned restructuring.
Why the timing makes sense — and why it carries risk
The move comes as global fintech exit markets heat up. According to QED Investors, fintech mergers and acquisitions paced toward a record year in 2025 with more than 200 announced deals, and 2026 is expected to see a second wave of fintech public-market debuts as late-stage companies pursue liquidity. Detaching Equity technology operations could allow the unit to access that capital market window independently, without being priced against the lower valuations typical of sub-Saharan African commercial banking stocks.
Equity Group Holdings is currently listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange NSE under the ticker EQTY, where it ranks among the most actively traded counters. Analysts say a separately listed tech entity could attract a valuation multiple more akin to a software business than a lender — a significant premium in the current market.
At the same time, the separation carries execution risk. Equity competitive edge has historically come from the tight integration of its mobile, insurance, payments and lending products into a single customer experience. Critics caution that disentangling technology infrastructure from banking operations could introduce friction and slow the product innovation that has driven the group 21.6 million-customer base across seven countries — Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a representative office in Ethiopia.
Africa AI and digital finance land grab
The broader backdrop is a continent-wide race to dominate AI-powered financial services before incumbents from outside Africa move in. Stablecoins processed USD 9 trillion in global payments in 2025, up 87% from 2024, and the shift is being felt in East Africa, where cross-border remittances and business-to-business transactions increasingly bypass legacy correspondent banking networks.
Equity Group has long positioned itself as the largest financial services conglomerate in East and Central Africa, a distinction reinforced in March 2024 when Brand Finance named it the second-strongest bank brand in the world with a Brand Strength Index score of 92.5 out of 100. Yet size and brand recognition alone are insufficient in a landscape being reshaped by AI-native payment agents, autonomous compliance tooling and real-time credit scoring.
Equity long-term ambition is to serve 100 million customers by 2030. Achieving that figure will almost certainly require the kind of nimble, independently capitalised technology operation that a legacy holding-company structure cannot easily provide. The spinoff, if completed on the timeline sources describe, would represent one of the most significant corporate restructurings by an African financial institution in years.
In 2014, Equity undertook a similar structural reorganisation — converting from a trading bank into a non-trading holding company — to better position itself for diversified growth across banking, insurance and technology. Executives who lived through that transition describe it as formative. Those familiar with the current deliberations suggest the same discipline is being applied now: careful, deliberate and driven by a clear thesis about where the money will be made in the next decade.
For investors, the question is not whether Equity Group can navigate a spinoff. It has done it before. The question is whether the separated tech entity, once independent, will be able to compete on a continent where mobile-money pioneer Safaricom M-Pesa and a growing roster of well-funded African fintechs are all angling for the same customer.
