{"id":14216,"date":"2026-11-10T14:15:59","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T14:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/10\/firstrand-kcb-lead-africas-top-bank-lenders-as-nigerian-banking-giants-rank-bottom-businessday-ng\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T14:15:59","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T14:15:59","slug":"firstrand-kcb-lead-africas-top-bank-lenders-as-nigerian-banking-giants-rank-bottom-businessday-ng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/10\/firstrand-kcb-lead-africas-top-bank-lenders-as-nigerian-banking-giants-rank-bottom-businessday-ng\/","title":{"rendered":"FirstRand, KCB lead Africa&#8217;s top bank lenders as Nigerian banking giants rank bottom &#8211; Businessday NG"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa\u2019s FirstRand Group and Kenya\u2019s KCB Group have emerged as Africa\u2019s leading financiers of businesses and households, while four of Nigeria\u2019s biggest banking groups occupy the bottom positions in a new continental ranking examining how effectively lenders channel their financial resources into the real economy.\n<\/p>\n<p>The ranking, published by Jeune Afrique and The Africa Report on November 9 as part of their 2026 Top 300 Finance Champions report, places FirstRand first, KCB second and C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s AFG Bank third among 22 pan-African banking groups.\n<\/p>\n<p>Zenith Bank, First HoldCo, UBA Group and GTCO occupy the nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first and twenty-second positions, respectively.\n<\/p>\n<p>The findings offer a different measure of banking performance, looking beyond the size of lenders\u2019 balance sheets and their profitability to assess how much of their financial resources are deployed as loans to businesses and households.\n<\/p>\n<p>Across the 22 banking groups, credit intensity, measured as loans relative to total assets, averaged 45 percent. The report compares this with an estimated 60 to 75 percent range for commercial banks globally, suggesting that African banking groups allocate a relatively smaller proportion of their assets to lending.<\/p>\n<p>The ranking also considers growth in outstanding loans, the conversion of deposits into loans and geographical footprint, providing a broader assessment of the contribution banks make to financing economic activity.\n<\/p>\n<p>KCB\u2019s second-place position reflects its 16.3 percent growth in net loans in 2025, almost three times Kenya\u2019s national market average of 5.9 percent. Operating in seven countries, the lender combines regional expansion with increased financing.\n<\/p>\n<p>C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s AFG Bank, however, recorded the fastest loan growth among the 22 institutions. Its net loans expanded by 47.58 percent in 2025, while credit intensity stood at 40.63 percent.\n<\/p>\n<p>With $3.64 billion in net customer loans, the bank ranked ahead of institutions with substantially larger balance sheets.\n<\/p>\n<p>Gabon\u2019s Groupe BGFIBank also made the top ten, ranking tenth with credit intensity of 50.77 percent and a loan-to-deposit ratio of 92.42 percent, supported by $6.71 billion in net customer loans.<\/p>\n<p>South African lenders accounted for four of the top ten positions, with FirstRand leading, followed by Absa Group, Nedbank in fifth and Standard Bank in ninth.\n<\/p>\n<p>Morocco had three representatives: Attijariwafa Bank, BOA-BMCE and Groupe BCP, all recording loan-to-deposit ratios above 80 percent.\n<\/p>\n<p>Julien Wagner, director of special content, partnerships and media diversification at Jeune Afrique Media Group, said: \u201cAt a time when many major international banking networks are gradually turning away from the continent, and when the challenge of financing African economies is more pressing than ever, pan-African banking groups must act as engines of growth, channeling capital and financial services into the economies in which they operate. It is precisely this mission that we seek to assess through this ranking.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>Nigeria\u2019s poor representation poses a challenge and identifies a gap. While Access Bank Group ranked seventeenth, with loan growth of 16.04 percent in 2025, its four domestic peers occupied the final four positions.\n<\/p>\n<p>The report points to mandatory reserve requirements, which tie up a significant share of deposits, and concerns about rising defaults as factors encouraging caution among Nigerian lenders.<\/p>\n<p>The new category joins the publication\u2019s existing rankings of the Top 200 Banks, Top 100 Insurers and best-performing pan-African banking groups.<\/p>\n<div class=\"bday-read-also\">\n<h4>Related News<\/h4>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"bday-ad bday-ad--gam\" id=\"bday-ad-2\" data-bday-ad=\"\" data-unit=\"bd-body-2\" data-placement=\"below_share_buttons\" data-partner=\"gam\" data-category=\"display\" data-device=\"all\"><span class=\"bday-ad__label\">Advertisement<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"bday-google-badges\">\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=businessday.ng\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><br \/>\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/FirstRand-KCB-lead-Africas-top-bank-lenders-as-Nigerian-banking-giants-rank-bottom-Businessday-NG.jpg\" alt=\"Add BusinessDay as a preferred source on Google\"\/><br \/>\n\t<\/a><br \/>\n\t<a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/publications\/CAAqKQgKIiNDQklTRkFnTWFoQUtEbUoxYzJsdVpYTnpaR0Y1TG01bktBQVAB?hl=en-NG&amp;gl=NG&amp;ceid=NG%3Aen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><br \/>\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/FirstRand-KCB-lead-Africas-top-bank-lenders-as-Nigerian-banking-giants-rank-bottom-Businessday-NG-1.jpg\" alt=\"Follow BusinessDay on Google News\"\/><br \/>\n\t<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p>Source: <\/p>\n<div class=\"nSourse\">Businessday NG<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa\u2019s FirstRand Group and Kenya\u2019s KCB Group have emerged as Africa\u2019s leading financiers of businesses and households, while four of Nigeria\u2019s biggest banking groups occupy the bottom positions in&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14217,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}