Equity Group has appointed Anzetse Were as its group economist and director of research, filling a position that has been vacant for over a year, as it strengthens its forecasting team.
Ms Were joins from Financial Sector Deepening (FSD) Kenya, where she was the senior economist and green finance advisor for the past five years. She joined Equity on December 1.
She fills the role that became vacant in August last year when group chief economist and director of research Yvonne Mhango resigned seven months into the job to join Bloomberg as Africa economist.
Ms Were sits on the boards of various companies, including Eveready East Africa, where she serves as a non-executive director. Between October 2014 and August 2014, she worked as a development economist and independent consultant under Anzetse Were Consulting, after leaving the Aga Khan University where she had been a research associate for nearly three years.
Equity Group chief executive James Mwangi told the Business Daily in an interview mid-last month that he had hired a global economist to lead the team.
“We are very excited that to have found a global Kenyan economist who will also contextualise our home market and also the regional market,” said Mr Mwangi, who withheld the name at the time.
“The strategy of the bank is to realign all the drivers of growth. But we need the right people, systems, processes and products. We have invested enormously and we have to balance that with the right skills. We are at the inflexion point.”
Most of the top banks have strengthened their research desks in an environment of diverse and fast-evolving risks that have had implications on the quality of the loan book.
Banks are now grappling with elevated levels of non-performing loans as a proportion of the total loan book, and the headache of balancing exposure to sovereign debt and lending to the private sector without compromising asset quality.
