Updated Wednesday, December 4th 2013 at 10:47 GMT +3
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he received after audit firm Ernst and
Young named him
EY World Entrepreneur of the year 2012 at an awards
ceremony held in Monte Carlo’s Salle des
Etoiles,
Monaco last year.
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By KENNETH KWAMA
The man who changed the face of banking and recruited millions of peasants into the industry, James Mwangi was an early riser in school who never showed any ambitions beyond passing his high school exams.
A former managing trustee at the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) who was the Mwangi’s roommate at Kagumo High School told The Standard there were no hints of Mwangi’s potential back then.
“He would wake up very early in the morning and sit on the bed as he brushed his shoes. He was never loud, but we noticed the meticulous manner in which he did his stuff. He transferred this character to the bank and made it what it is today,” said the former NSSF boss who requested not to be named.
When Mwangi joined Equity in 1993, it was a struggling building society, it had already been declared technically insolvent. It was making losses in excess of Sh5 million every year and was facing a cumulative loss of Sh33 million. The staff had not been paid salaries and morale was low.
But change was not only happening at the building society. The entire banking industry, which was then dominated by multi-nationals, was undergoing a transition.
BIG BANKS
To maximise profit, the big banks were closing branches that were deemed as non-performing, mostly in rural areas. This inevitably meant they had to retrench workers too.
Mwangi saw the gap, but Equity Building Society was too broke to fill in where the big banks had exited.
Unable to expand immediately, he sought to do the bit that didn’t require capital-change the internal culture at Equity.
He decided to focus on customer care. Customers, many of them peasant farmers, were given red carpet treatment. Tales began to blossom about farmers who would come straight from their farms with muddied gumboots and go straight to the banking halls.
When Mwangi took over as the strategy and finance director, Equity had 27 employees, 27,000 customers, five branches and stood at number 66 out of 66 in the financial sector rankings.
The man who changed the face of banking and recruited millions of peasants into the industry, James Mwangi was an early riser in school who never showed any ambitions beyond passing his high school exams.
A former managing trustee at the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) who was the Mwangi’s roommate at Kagumo High School told The Standard there were no hints of Mwangi’s potential back then.
“He would wake up very early in the morning and sit on the bed as he brushed his shoes. He was never loud, but we noticed the meticulous manner in which he did his stuff. He transferred this character to the bank and made it what it is today,” said the former NSSF boss who requested not to be named.
When Mwangi joined Equity in 1993, it was a struggling building society, it had already been declared technically insolvent. It was making losses in excess of Sh5 million every year and was facing a cumulative loss of Sh33 million. The staff had not been paid salaries and morale was low.
But change was not only happening at the building society. The entire banking industry, which was then dominated by multi-nationals, was undergoing a transition.
BIG BANKS
To maximise profit, the big banks were closing branches that were deemed as non-performing, mostly in rural areas. This inevitably meant they had to retrench workers too.
Mwangi saw the gap, but Equity Building Society was too broke to fill in where the big banks had exited.
Unable to expand immediately, he sought to do the bit that didn’t require capital-change the internal culture at Equity.
He decided to focus on customer care. Customers, many of them peasant farmers, were given red carpet treatment. Tales began to blossom about farmers who would come straight from their farms with muddied gumboots and go straight to the banking halls.
When Mwangi took over as the strategy and finance director, Equity had 27 employees, 27,000 customers, five branches and stood at number 66 out of 66 in the financial sector rankings.
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