Kenyan small savers with bank balances of less than Ksh100,000 ($666.66) have closed 5.66 million accounts in the past two years while others have reduced their account balances to a bare minimum in the backdrop of hard economic times and proliferation of alternative savings channels such as mobile wallets and 'chamas'.
Latest Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) data shows that the number of deposit accounts in the banking sector declined by 7.78 percent (5.66 million) to 67 million accounts in 2022 from 72.66 million accounts in 2020, disrupting a decade- long growth trend that started in 2010.
