Banking Sector Stability, Efficiency, and Outreach in Kenya
By Thorsten Beck, Robert J. Cull, Michaela Fuchs, J. Getenga, Peter K. Gatere, John Randa, M. Trandafir. 2010
122 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Although Kenya's financial system is by far the largest and most developed in East Africa and its stability has improved significantly over the past years, many challenges remain. This paper assesses the stability, efficiency, and outreach of Kenya's banking system, using aggregate, bank-level, and survey data. Banks' asset quality and liquidity positions have improved, making the system more resistant to shocks, and interest rate spreads have declined, in part due to reduction in the overhead costs of foreign banks. Outreach remains limited, but has improved in recent years, driven by mobile payments services in the domestic remittance market. Fostering a level regulatory playing field for all deposit-taking institutions is a key remaining challenge. Specifically, an effective but not overly burdensome framework for regulation and supervision of microfinance institutions and cooperatives is a priority. Maintaining an openness to new, and non-bank, providers of financial services, which has enabled the success of mobile payments, could also further outreach.
Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics, Finance
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/82b3c94ab7782f6aba386042dce8eaab7f44a97d
Citations in the corpus
- Financial Inclusion and Financial Sector Stability With Reference To Kenya: A Review of Literature (2012, unknown): “In Kenya private credit to GDP, a standard indicator of financial development, was 23.7percent in 2008, compared to a median of 12.3percent for Sub-Saharan Africa which was lower than in 2005, though the quality of lending had significantly improved (Beck et al, 2010).”
- Mobile Phones, Financial Inclusion, and Growth (2012, unknown): “…density, as well as for the cost of financial intermediation, the legal environment and the geographical coverage of bank branches.31 Similarly, by using household survey data, Beck et al. (2010) find that the ownership of a cell phone increases the likelihood of using financial services in Kenya.”