Equity names Uganda MD Samuel Kirubi as Group operating chief
Monday November 21 2022
Equity Group has appointed Samuel Kirubi as its Group Chief Operating Officer. PHOTO | COURTESY
Equity Group has picked a veteran insider Samuel Kirubi as the Group’s chief operating officer (GCOO) as the lender seeks to scale up its financial services through technology.
“As Equity rolls outs its ambitious Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan with the aim of scaling its customer base to 100 million by 2025, this calls for the scaling up of our operations, footprint and distribution infrastructure driven by technologically driven digitisation and virtualisation of the Bank,” said Group chief executive officer James Mwangi in a statement.
“The Board has expressed confidence in Kirubi’s capability, experience and deep knowledge of the transition culture in taking up this responsibility at a critical time of the bank’s growth and expansion.”
Equity’s Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan is a private sector-focused stimulus package with an initial seed capital of Ksh700 billion ($5.78 billion), announced in March.
The fund will be extended through credit lines to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) across the region - South Sudan, DRC, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda, where the lender operates.
The programme targets to lend to at least five million MSMEs and create up to 25 million direct and indirect jobs in the next five years.
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Mr Kirubi will be moving to the Equity Bank head office in Nairobi from Uganda, where he has been the subsidiary’s managing director since 2015.
During his tenure, he helped turn Equity Bank from a loss-making unit to the fifth most profitable lender in Uganda and the third most profitable subsidiary of Equity Group after Kenya and DR Congo.
Mr Kirubi is taking over the GCOO position from John Wilson who exited in 2019.
In Uganda, he will be replaced by Anthony Kituka, the current executive director.
Mr Kirubi joined Equity in 2001 and served in operations, marketing and customer service. He was appointed chief operations officer in South Sudan in 2009. He was then promoted to founding MD of Equity Bank Rwanda in 2011 before his deployment to Uganda four years later.