The People Banker: Paul Russo’s Long Road from Laisamis to KCB

In Paul Russo’s office at National Bank of Kenya in 2020, three framed photographs stood behind his desk.

One showed his wife and three daughters. Another showed him carrying his son. In the third, a camel pressed its mouth against his cheek.

The camel was the least corporate object in the room and the clearest clue to the man occupying it.

Russo is Rendille, raised around Laisamis in Marsabit County, and has retained camels and goats as a physical connection to home. He has described the camel as a teacher of endurance, distance and resilience. It can keep moving when water is scarce and the terrain is unkind. In his community, it also represents sharing: camel milk may be offered to a stranger.

When asked what he had learnt from the animal, Russo answered: “To be hardy, go the distance, be resilient.”

At the time, those were useful qualities. National Bank was not a comfortable posting. It had been weakened by years of capital shortfalls, poor-quality lending, governance failures and declining confidence. Some borrowers with distressed facilities arrived at its offices with threats. Friends advised Russo to change offices, employ armed guards and be careful about who prepared his tea.

He took the job anyway.

The assignment would help establish a pattern in his career. Russo has repeatedly been sent into institutions where the strategy already exists but belief in its execution has deteriorated. His work has been less about inventing a new theory of banking than getting people, systems and balance sheets to obey one.

That remains his task at KCB Group—only the institution is now considerably larger, the borders more numerous and the consequences heavier.

The first chance

Russo’s journey into banking began with a wager made by his family.

After primary school in Laisamis, he secured admission to Mang’u High School. For a family whose wealth was held in livestock, the offer created both pride and a financial crisis. His father sold the animals he owned to support the opportunity. Russo’s elder brother gave up his own education so that the younger boy could continue.

Fees remained difficult. Russo eventually approached Food for the Hungry International in Westlands and persuaded the organisation’s education team to support him. He later joined Moi University, where the financial struggle continued.

Before he understood banks as balance sheets, Russo understood capital as sacrifice. His education was financed by livestock, a brother’s surrender and a stranger’s willingness to give a capable child a chance.

He has said that the most educated man near his childhood home was a senior chief who owned a large herd of cattle. His father once pointed towards the animals and explained that this was what educated boys could accomplish. The lesson was not really about accumulating cattle. It was about making possibility visible in a place where livelihoods were shaped by competition for water, pasture and physical security.

At Mang’u, Russo’s professional ambition was surprisingly specific. He wanted to work at KCB’s Marsabit branch.

The branch employees drove a Land Rover, carried newspapers and wore suits and ties in the dust. To a boy from Laisamis, the bank appeared to offer admission into a larger world without requiring him to abandon where he came from.

That ambition has travelled a remarkable distance. Russo no longer wants a desk inside the Marsabit branch. He oversees a group operating banks in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The distance between those two positions is his biography. Making those seven operations function as a disciplined group is the unresolved part of the story.

The unusual route to the top

Most bank chief executives rise through credit, corporate banking, treasury or finance. Russo came through human resources.

He began his career at Kenya Breweries and subsequently held roles at Unga Holdings, K-Rep Bank, PwC and Barclays Africa. His work at Barclays exposed him to organisational change across several African markets. KCB recruited him in 2014 as Group Human Resources Director.

The route invited an obvious question: could a career built around people management prepare someone to allocate capital, manage credit risk and run a regulated financial institution?

Russo’s answer has been that banking transformations are ultimately behavioural. Technology must be selected, funded and operated by people. Credit policies only work when lenders follow them. A regional strategy fails if executives in Nairobi treat subsidiary teams as implementers instead of owners.

“There are two things that drive organisations: people and technology,” he said shortly after becoming KCB Group CEO. “It is people who drive technology.”

That argument is persuasive up to a point. A bank cannot be managed as an elaborate staff-engagement programme. Depositors require access to their money. Regulators require capital, liquidity and reliable controls. Bad loans must be recognised even when doing so damages reported profit. Acquisitions must earn more than they cost.

Russo’s career moved from human resources into those harder tests.

In April 2016, Chase Bank was placed in receivership after a run by depositors and concerns about its financial position. The Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation, with the Central Bank of Kenya’s endorsement, appointed KCB as the institution’s manager. KCB selected Russo, then its HR director, to lead its receiver-management team.

The rescue was institutional, not the achievement of one executive. KCB supplied liquidity, personnel and operational capacity under the supervision of the regulator and deposit insurer. Russo nevertheless found himself at the centre of an assignment far removed from a conventional HR portfolio.

All Chase Bank branches reopened on April 27, 2016. Customers received immediate access to deposits of up to KSh1 million, which covered 97 per cent of accounts in full. The team still had to reconcile assets and liabilities, recover irregular and non-performing facilities, stabilise employees and persuade customers that the doors would remain open.

The episode gave Russo operational credibility. It also demonstrated why banking crises are as much about collective behaviour as accounting. A solvent plan can still fail if customers run, employees disengage or regulators lose confidence.

National Bank: repair without romance

KCB acquired National Bank in 2019 and appointed Russo managing director that September.

The lender arrived with a valuable franchise, a substantial public-sector customer base and a balance sheet that required both capital and repair. KCB injected funds, converted subordinated debt into equity, changed governance and supplied group capabilities. Russo took charge of operations and culture.

By the end of 2021, National Bank had reported profit after tax of KSh1.1 billion, 431 per cent above the previous year. Loans had grown by 21 per cent, operating income had risen to KSh10.2 billion and assets had reached KSh146 billion.

The improvement cannot responsibly be assigned to Russo alone. Lower loan-loss provisions helped. KCB’s capital and institutional backing were indispensable. National Bank continued to face capital constraints and later absorbed a large legal award. It was a supported rehabilitation, not a solitary corporate rescue.

The experience still strengthened Russo’s case for the top KCB job. He had moved from designing people systems to reopening one troubled bank and running another.

On May 25, 2022, KCB appointed him Group Chief Executive Officer following a competitive process. He succeeded Joshua Oigara, whose tenure had turned KCB into a regional institution of considerable scale. Russo did not inherit a collapsing bank. He inherited an expanding group with unfinished integrations, ageing loans, uneven subsidiaries and the complexity that follows rapid growth.

That difference matters. Rescuing a bank can create a concentrated objective: stabilise it. Running a regional group requires simultaneous decisions about capital, technology, culture, credit, regulation and which businesses no longer belong in the portfolio.

Cleaning before compounding

Russo’s first full year as Group CEO was not designed to flatter him.

KCB’s profit after tax declined from KSh40.8 billion in 2022 to KSh37.5 billion in 2023. Group loan-loss provisions rose sharply to KSh27.4 billion. The cost-to-income ratio deteriorated, non-performing loans increased and shareholders received no dividend—the first nil distribution in more than two decades.

Within KCB Bank Kenya, management downgraded KSh34 billion of facilities that had remained on the books for more than five years and wrote off another KSh10 billion. A voluntary staff-exit programme cost KSh1.5 billion, while legal claims associated with National Bank added further expense.

Russo could have delayed some of that recognition and protected the appearance of a smoother first year. Instead, he argued that an incoming chief executive should not manufacture attractive numbers by carrying forward losses that the institution already knows exist.

He also made a structural change whose importance could easily be missed. KCB Bank Kenya was given its own managing director, separating leadership of the domestic bank from leadership of the holding company. Previously, the Group CEO also ran the Kenyan subsidiary.

Russo’s explanation was unusually direct: a chief executive responsible for both roles could end up asking himself questions—and being gentler with his own answers. Separate leadership allowed the group to subject KCB Bank Kenya to the same performance and governance conversations as every other subsidiary.

The subsequent earnings recovery has been substantial. Group profit after tax rose 65 per cent to KSh61.8 billion in 2024 and reached KSh68.4 billion in 2025. By the end of 2025, assets stood at KSh2.15 trillion, net customer loans at KSh1.15 trillion and deposits at KSh1.59 trillion. Return on equity was 22.5 per cent.

Shareholders received KSh7 a share for 2025, although KSh3 of that distribution was a special dividend associated with the sale of National Bank. The payout therefore combined recurring earnings with the monetisation of an asset.

The latest results extend the recovery. During the first half of 2026, KCB reported profit before tax of KSh49.3 billion, 20.8 per cent above the corresponding period. Assets reached KSh2.3 trillion and deposits KSh1.71 trillion. The gross non-performing-loan ratio fell from 18.7 per cent to 15.1 per cent.

Fifteen per cent is still high. KCB carried KSh203.8 billion of gross non-performing loans at the end of June, with almost nine-tenths sitting in KCB Bank Kenya. The group has made progress through recoveries, rehabilitation, provisioning and the removal of National Bank from its accounts. It has not completed the clean-up.

Russo inherited scale, but not a clean loan book. The quality of KCB’s next period of growth will depend on whether new lending produces better assets than the old growth cycle left behind.

Building a regional bank without a Nairobi empire

KCB’s regional footprint is now large enough to be economically meaningful.

In 2025, subsidiaries outside KCB Bank Kenya generated 29.5 per cent of group profit after tax and held 30.5 per cent of group assets. Trust Merchant Bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo earned KSh8.8 billion. BPR Bank Rwanda produced KSh3.7 billion, while the Tanzanian and Ugandan businesses reported KSh3.3 billion and KSh1.8 billion respectively.

Russo’s human-capital background is clearest in how he talks about these subsidiaries. He has rejected the image of a “big bull” arriving from Nairobi with instructions, then flying home while local executives remain responsible for implementation. His preference is to retain local knowledge, empower subsidiary management and use the holding company to supply capital, technology, risk systems and performance pressure.

KCB’s treatment of Trust Merchant Bank illustrates the approach. The group acquired 85 per cent of the Congolese lender in late 2022 but did not immediately erase its identity beneath the KCB name. TMB had a substantial branch network, local relationships and customers who had selected that brand. A rapid rebranding might have satisfied a desire for visual uniformity while destroying part of what KCB had purchased.

Regionalisation also imports instability. TMB’s profit fell by 16 per cent in 2025 as conflict in eastern DRC disrupted activity. South Sudan and Burundi expose the group to hyperinflationary accounting, currency volatility and difficult operating environments. Different regulators impose different capital and compliance demands.

Diversification can protect KCB from a weak cycle in one country. It also ensures that the group is never managing only one cycle.

Russo’s assignment is therefore not to reproduce KCB Kenya seven times. It is to create common financial discipline without eliminating the local intelligence that made the subsidiaries valuable.

Knowing when to let go

National Bank eventually tested whether KCB could distinguish institutional attachment from capital allocation.

When KCB acquired the lender in 2019, the stated expectation was that it would eventually be absorbed into the wider group. Instead, KCB agreed in 2024 to sell it to Nigeria’s Access Bank. The transaction was completed on May 30, 2025.

KCB received total consideration of approximately KSh15.8 billion, including a contingent component, and recognised an after-tax disposal gain of KSh2.7 billion. Part of the consideration remained in escrow for warranties, indemnities and possible post-completion adjustments. KCB also retained specified assets and liabilities before completion.

The sale can be read in two ways, and both contain truth.

National Bank had been stabilised, returned to profitability and made attractive enough to find a strategic buyer. KCB released capital and recorded a gain. The proceeds supported a larger shareholder distribution.

It is also true that National Bank had remained capital-hungry, legally complicated and difficult to integrate. Its departure helped reduce KCB’s reported non-performing-loan ratio. Repair did not lead to permanent ownership.

Selling the institution was not an admission that the rehabilitation had failed. It was an acknowledgement that management’s responsibility is not to keep every asset it has improved. Banks must also know when another owner has a stronger strategic reason to hold it.

From owning banks to owning the rails

Russo’s next wager is less visible than opening branches or acquiring another lender.

KCB reported 1.58 billion digital transactions in 2025—99 per cent of all transactions by count. Those transactions carried KSh7.47 trillion, equivalent to 63 per cent of transaction value. The distinction matters: everyday activity has migrated overwhelmingly to digital channels, while branches and traditional banking channels continue to handle a substantial share of high-value flows.

The group disbursed KSh544 billion in mobile loans during the year. It has been consolidating agency-banking systems, expanding application programming interfaces, introducing digital credit workflows and connecting regional subsidiaries to more common technological infrastructure.

In December 2025, KCB completed the acquisition of 75 per cent of Riverbank Solutions for KSh1.44 billion. Riverbank supplies payment, agency-banking, wallet and enterprise systems. On a pro-forma basis, however, the company would have reported a KSh212 million loss before tax for 2025. Buying technological capability is not the same as converting it into earnings.

KCB has also agreed to acquire a minority interest in Pesapal, subject to regulatory approvals. Pesapal would give the group deeper merchant-acquiring and payment-acceptance capabilities across several African markets while remaining an independently operated business.

These investments reveal the direction of travel. KCB does not want to be only the institution that holds deposits and writes loans. It wants to own more of the infrastructure through which merchants collect money, agents serve customers, businesses manage transactions and credit decisions are made.

This is a harder integration problem than attaching a fintech logo to a bank. Riverbank and Pesapal must retain the speed and product discipline that made them attractive while satisfying KCB’s standards for security, anti-money-laundering controls, data governance and operational resilience.

Russo’s proposition that people drive technology will now be tested at scale. The group must persuade bankers and technologists to build one commercial system without turning the technology companies into slow internal departments.

The price of responsibility

Success at this scale is highly rewarded.

KCB’s 2025 annual report records total remuneration of KSh285.3 million for Russo, up 14 per cent from KSh250.2 million in 2024. The 2025 amount included KSh85.9 million in salary, cash and deferred bonuses, allowances, gratuity and non-cash benefits. He also held a disclosed director’s interest of 303,800 KCB shares at the end of the year.

The rewards accompany a role in which compliance failures, credit decisions and technology weaknesses can affect millions of customers.

That responsibility acquired a more immediate dimension in August 2026. The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions said Russo, KCB and the leaders of two other banks would face charges over alleged failures to report suspicious transactions connected to the alleged loss of KSh363.3 million from First Assurance Investment.

KCB and Russo obtained High Court conservatory orders on August 7 restraining arrest, plea-taking and prosecution while their challenge is considered. As at August 25, Russo had not entered a plea and the prosecution’s evidence had not been tested. The orders are a procedural stay, not an acquittal; the allegations are also not proof of wrongdoing.

The dispute deserves precision because it reaches the centre of Russo’s public mandate. He was elected chairman of the Kenya Bankers Association in June 2025 and now speaks for an industry whose licence to operate depends on trust. He also serves as Chancellor of Kibabii University, chairs the council of Consolata International University and sits on the UNEP Finance Initiative Leadership Council.

KCB has reported stronger profits, improving credit quality and substantial digital growth during his tenure. Those achievements do not answer the compliance allegations. The courts will determine the legal questions. The wider leadership question is whether the systems beneath a chief executive can identify, escalate and stop questionable activity without relying on his personal intervention.

A people banker is ultimately judged by the conduct of the institution’s people when he is not in the room.

Going the distance

Russo’s life has been shaped by people who created room for him before his résumé justified the bet.

His father converted livestock into school fees. His elder brother surrendered his own opportunity. A woman responsible for education sponsorship listened when a struggling Mang’u student arrived at her office. Employers allowed an HR practitioner to move into jobs normally reserved for conventional bankers. KCB entrusted him with distressed institutions before giving him the group.

“Everybody needs a chance,” he once said.

He now runs an institution that distributes chances at industrial scale: a working-capital facility for a trader, a mobile loan for a household, a payment terminal for a merchant, a branch in a difficult market, or capital for a business that has not yet become obvious.

But KCB cannot be carried across seven markets by one executive’s endurance. Its loan book, fintech acquisitions, regional subsidiaries and compliance obligations are too heavy for heroic management.

Russo’s legacy will depend on whether the people banker builds a system in which thousands of people can move the institution without waiting for him: local leaders with real authority, credit teams willing to recognise losses, technologists able to move quickly without weakening controls, and compliance officers powerful enough to stop profitable transactions when trust requires it.

The boy from Laisamis once dreamed of working at KCB Marsabit.

The man he became now has to make KCB work—coherently—for an entire region.

𝑅𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑛𝑜𝑡𝑒: 𝐹𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑟𝑎𝑤𝑛 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐾𝐶𝐵 𝐺𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑝’𝑠 𝑎𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑠, 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑢𝑛𝑎𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡-ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑓 2026 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠, 𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑙 𝐵𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑜𝑓 𝐾𝑒𝑛𝑦𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐾𝑒𝑛𝑦𝑎 𝐷𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑖𝑡 𝐼𝑛𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑟𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠, 𝑁𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝐵𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠, 𝑜𝑓𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑐𝑜𝑟𝑑𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑝𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑃𝑎𝑢𝑙 𝑅𝑢𝑠𝑠𝑜. 𝐿𝑒𝑔𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑢𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝐴𝑢𝑔𝑢𝑠𝑡 25, 2026.