Stanbic Bank Kenya has appointed former Safaricom executive Michael Mutiga as its chief executive.
Stanbic Bank Kenya has officially appointed Michael Mutiga, a top-tier executive from Safaricom as its new Chief Executive Officer, effective August 1, 2026. Mutiga, who has been serving as Safaricom’s Chief Business Development and Strategy Officer, step into the role to drive the lender’s regional growth and digital scaling ambitions.
He takes over from Joshua Oigara, who was promoted earlier in the year to lead the parent company, Stanbic Holdings Plc, as Group Chief Executive. Since Oigara’s transition, Abraham Ongenge had been steering the commercial banking subsidiary in an acting capacity.
Mutiga brings over two decades of heavy-hitting leadership experience spanning the corporate banking, telecommunications, and digital financial services sectors. Before leading corporate strategy at Safaricom, he spent years anchoring major regional and international banking institutions, establishing deep expertise in large-scale operations, investment banking, and corporate finance.
The transition highlights a major structural trend across East Africa’s financial services industry: the deliberate cross-pollination of talent between traditional tier-1 commercial banking and advanced telecommunications. By pulling an executive from Safaricom the telecom powerhouse behind the continent-defining mobile money platform M-Pesa Stanbic is positioning its leadership team to tightly integrate standard balance-sheet lending with agile, high-velocity digital ecosystem plays.
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Mutiga assumes the helm of an institution with strong financial momentum. In the first quarter ended March 2026, Stanbic Bank Kenya reported a 5% increase in net profit, hitting Sh3.5 billion (~$26.8 million). This growth was anchored by sustained growth in customer lending volumes, stronger net interest margins and highly disciplined lean enterprise cost-management frameworks.
The bank’s board indicated that Mutiga’s immediate mandate will center on leveraging his dual banking-and-telecom background to accelerate the bank’s digital transformation roadmap, broaden its regional market share, and strengthen corporate stakeholder engagement across East Africa.
