At the end of 2025, Standard Chartered (StanChart) Bank Kenya, the country’s ninth-largest bank, had a staff count of 942, about 5.9% down from the previous year. According to its reports, this was the 11th consecutive year the bank had reduced staff, from over 2,000 in 2014 to just 942 by the end of 2025.
State of play: StanChart Kenya, despite having 22 branches and over 100 automated teller machines (ATMs) across the country, has continued to prioritise its wealth banking operations. According to its 2025 report, the lender is shifting its strategy to “Wealth & Retail Banking pivot to Affluent” and says it wants to implement initiatives to simplify, standardise, and digitise its processes to unlock capacity for growth.
As part of this plan, it will deepen engagement with Kenya’s high-net-worth (HNW) individuals. Serving affluent customers requires less reliance on larger teams; the bank has been strategically reducing headcount for years.
StanChart, which has recently divested banking assets in Uganda and Tanzania, said the latest reductions were due to its “affluent banking” pivot and claimed it had ensured the changes were handled “transparently, sensitively, and in accordance with policy and regulatory requirements.”
Between the lines: Despite the headcount reduction, StanChart Kenya paid more in salaries and wages compared to the previous year. In 2025, it paid KES 6.43 billion ($49.8 million) in salaries, more than the KES 6.12 billion ($47.4 million) it paid on a larger headcount the previous year. This could mean the bank is still offsetting benefits or statutory payments to affected employees in previous years.
Redundancy costs were KES 112.3 million ($870,000) in 2025, compared to KES 580.1 million ($4.5 million) in 2024, indicating that the bank still maintained redundant roles last year, even though the figure steeply declined.
In 2025, about 16 unionisable positions—typically occupied by junior and support staff—were affected, while a few management-level employees were also made redundant.
Profitable but cautious: While StanChart Kenya recorded KES 12.4 billion ($96 million) in profit after tax for 2025, that figure actually declined from KES 20.6 billion ($159.5 million) the previous year. Now, the bank wants fewer operational staff and is leaning on a few specialised roles that align with its new direction.