Ateker TV 
Kenya ended 2025 with only 788,853 bank accounts carrying balances of Ksh500,000 or higher, newly released figures from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) show.
The number appears in the appendix of the CBK’s Bank Supervision Annual Report 2025, which tracks access to financial services across the banking industry.
According to the disclosure, these high-value accounts climbed from 746,665 recorded in December 2024, translating to a year-on-year rise of about 5.6 per cent.
However, this increase was overshadowed by a much larger shift elsewhere in the same dataset: accounts holding under Ksh500,000 collapsed from close to 117 million to roughly 83 million within twelve months, a fall of nearly 34 million accounts.
KCB Bank Behind the Bulk of the Decline
A closer look at the figures traces most of this drop to one institution. KCB Bank Kenya’s low-balance accounts (those under Ksh500,000) dropped from approximately 53.6 million to about 12.2 million, a reduction exceeding 41 million accounts, which alone surpasses the total industry-wide decline.
By contrast, other leading lenders such as NCBA, Co-operative Bank and Absa recorded increases in their low-balance account numbers over the same window, indicating the nationwide dip was driven almost entirely by KCB’s figures.
CBK’s report offers no explanation within its narrative sections for this sharp swing, leaving open several possibilities: a mass dormant-account purge, a core banking system migration, an internal reclassification, or another administrative adjustment.
Given how dramatic the shift is, industry watchers suspect it reflects a bookkeeping or systems change at KCB rather than an actual mass exodus of depositors closing accounts.
What the High-Net-Worth Account Data Reveals
Combining commercial banks and microfinance institutions, the total deposit account count nationwide reached 84,111,829 as of December 2025. Of these, under 1 per cent qualified as high-balance accounts holding Ksh500,000 or more.
By sheer volume of low-balance accounts, NCBA Bank Kenya topped the sector with 36.3 million, while KCB, Equity Bank, Co-operative Bank and Absa filled out the remaining top five commercial banks ranked by total account numbers.
Financial analysts caution that these figures count accounts, not unique individuals. Because affluent customers and businesses frequently spread their funds across multiple banks, the actual number of Kenyans holding upwards of half a million shillings in savings is almost certainly lower than the 788,853 accounts reported.
The CBK situates this dataset within its broader effort to monitor financial inclusion trends, publishing it alongside related figures on insured and customer deposits elsewhere in the same annual report.
Analysts Flag Data Consistency Concerns
While the modest growth in high-balance accounts suggests a gradually expanding pool of wealthier savers and enterprises, the steep decline in low-balance accounts is expected to attract closer examination from financial sector analysts.
The core question: does this reflect a genuine shift in Kenya’s banking landscape, or does it expose reporting inconsistencies among the country’s largest banks that could distort the broader financial inclusion narrative?
