Equity Bank to set up incubation centre

By Macharia Kamau

Financial and telecommunications innovations are increasingly becoming attractive to investors, and financial institutions.

Equity Bank announced on Wednesday plans to launch an incubation and innovation acceleration centre that would help computer and application developers grow and commercialise their innovations.

The bank’s Chief Executive, James Mwangi, said the centre would be established in partnership with the University of Waterloo, Canada.

The innovation and acceleration centre will be the lastest of several such incubation centres that have been recently set up. These include Kenya Country Business Incubation Enterprises, Nairobi ’s software incubation centre iHub, Strathmore University ‘s iLab Africa, and University of Nairobi’s Fab Lab

"We’re going to launch the incubation centre, and later give developers loans to commercialise their products," said Mwangi.

Mwangi was speaking yesterday at the Connected Kenya Summit, an ICT conference in Mombasa themed ‘Innovating for the Citizen’.

Commercialise their ideas

He noted that both Government and private sector players should invest in local innovations by helping the brains behind innovations develop and commercialise their ideas.

"There is a lot of innovation in Kenya, and this is evident in the applications like M-Pesa and Ushahidi that have been adopted by other countries," said Mwangi.

"There is, however, need by Government to invest innovation centres at the country level so as to help innovators develop and commercialise the ideas as opposed to selling the ideas at infancy level," he added.

Information and Communication PS Bitange Ndemo said incubators would improve the industry as well as employment creation.

"Consistent improvements lead to innovation, this is why we should keep improving Kenya, and have strategies in place that will always drive us ahead as a country. The quest is to get the country to be a knowledge society," he said.

Equity expects to leverage on technology to grow its business using the agency-banking model. The bank, which holds over 50 per cent of local bank accounts, has recruited 8,000 agents that are offering a degree of financial services.

Mwangi said 2,000 are operational, and operating like a bank including deposit taking, making withdrawals and accepting loan applications.

"Two thousand agents are operational... we will launch the agency model and brand name towards end of this month," he said.

"We expect a lot in terms of growth and reach from this model of banking... already 46 per cent of dormant accounts have been reactivated."

He said agency banking had seen the cost of accessing financial services drop by over 90 per cent, noting customers spent a lot in travelling to access banks especially in far-flung rural areas.