Barclays Bank of Kenya announced its full year financial results for 2017 recording 6.3 percent decline in net profits.
The lender has registered 6.9 billion shillings in net profits down from 7.3 billion shillings in 2016.
In a statement sent to newsrooms, the bank’s income went down by three percent to 27 billion shillings from 28 billion shillings in 2016.
The slight shrinking in income has been attributed to the flat growth in customer loans that stood at 168 billion shillings in 2017.
According to the Managing Director, Jeremy Awori, the implementation of the interest capping law compressed the margins of the lender resulting in a decline in the revenue.
“Currently, our strategy is to close the income gap by increasing sales volumes in the upper segments, increasing our product penetration in our current client base and increasing our focus on transactional banking deposits,” said Awori.
Costs slightly dropped by one percent in 2017 to close at 16.8 billion shillings with the amount used to pay employees who retired voluntarily included. 500 million shillings were used.