New Family Bank CEO eyes records in banking race

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New Family Bank CEO eyes records in banking race

Thursday, October 3, 2019 22:00

By EDWIN OKOTH

She started school with the dream of becoming a pilot but would later change course, joining law school and doing accounting at the same time. This led her to a career path that has now seen her among the chosen few in the male dominated banking realm.

Ms Rebecca Mbithi’s appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of Family Bank took her to the peak of an ambition she had been nursing for a while.

“I knew I wanted to be a CEO but I wouldn’t want to be one who did not have in-depth understanding of businesses so I registered for Certified Public Accounting courses just as I was studying law and accomplished both at the same time. That was no easy task though,” Ms Mbithi told Business Daily.

The Board had placed her on acting capacity at the bank’s corner office since March and she was in the middle of a strategy meeting with her staff, when the greenlight came from the Central Bank of Kenya making her substantive CEO.

Having served as the company secretary and director, legal services for four years, she had the bank’s flight path on her radar.

The CEO who has run five out of the six major world marathons including the New York, Chicago, London and Berlin Marathons now embarks on a corporate leadership race that a few women have run. She looks fit for it, literally and it has been a long jogging.

In fact, as at end of 2018, only four in 62, or a meagre six percent, of chief executive officers or managing directors of companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange were women.

The situation is even worse in the banking sector where women have historically taken the back seat when it comes to occupying the C-suites. That is changing, according to Ms Mbithi now at the helm of Kenya’s fourth largest lender.

Ms Mbithi who later firmed her business career focus by doing a Master’s in Business Administration (Strategic Management) from the United States International University says women must be “present at the table” to be ready to take up such high positions and “change the narrative”.

“Every opportunity you have as a woman counts, so the little role you have should propel you higher by giving the right signal that you are ready to take the mantle,” she says

“Once you stay away from the table where these decisions are made and remain laid back, you miss the chance” she adds, recalling a past experience where her boss once left her to be in charge of an organisation only five months after joining it.

The plunge into the deep end, although just for the Christmas holidays, for her was a defining moment when she proved her ability and got hardened for higher roles.

The Board of Directors attributed her appointment to the chief executive position due to her extensive background in leadership in various organisations at director level specialising in law, project finance, corporate restructuring, equity/debt raising and governance. She had previously worked at the Kenya Tea Development Agencies (KTDA) and Rift Valley Railway.

She is now expected to steer the bank’s strategy and business development, capital and debt raising, risk management, compliance and controls, providing legal services as well as strengthening the bank’s governance structures.

“My focus is also to make the work environment very friendly and rewarding for the staff as well as ensure the customers have a wow experience. We know our customers very well after investing in profiling them and engaging them all over the country and we know exactly how to meet their needs through innovation,” Ms Mbithi says.

In her new role, she is well aware of the ongoing disruption in the banking sector with customers demanding fast and efficient services including digital transaction, with others still stuck in brick and mortar banking experiences.

According to her, the mushrooming mobile lending apps are late entrants into the game, with Family Bank having gone digital a while back through the Pesa Pap.

The bank has been improving on the mobile experience which has now turned the app into a borrowing and savings banking avenue just like the other upcoming applications on mobile.

As she prepares to run in the Family Group Eldoret Half Marathon this weekend, her new race in the top rank of banking has just begun and many will be watching to see how high she will soar and how many records she will break as years roll by.