Kenya banks should factor in supply chain security in expansion strategy
Trust Merchant Bank SA (TMB) CEO Oliver Meisenberg, KCB Group Chairman Andrew Wambari Kairu and Central Bank of Kenya Governor Patrick Njoroge during the KCB Group transaction agreement documents exchange event following the acquisition of shares in DRC-Based Trust Merchant Bank (TMB), at the Nairobi Serena on December 19, 2022. PHOTO | DIANA NGILA | NMG
Regional expansion of Kenyan banks indicates a lucrative financial market up for grabs.
When a company expands from a local to a regional or global presence, its operation strategy needs to be adjusted to align with the changes.
Global business comes with unique challenges and opportunities. Geopolitics, including trade agreements and treaties, territorial acknowledgement, material, relational and ideological differences, fiscal and monetary policy differences, language barriers, cultural differences, and trade tensions pose a delicate balance to global players.
With increasing volatility in supply chains, supply chain security is becoming a pressing issue for companies.
Supply chain challenges, which began with Covid-19-related interruptions and worsened by the Russia-Ukraine war, have pushed prices up in most economies.
According to the World Bank, several historical indicators of global recessions are already flashing warnings. Global consumer confidence has suffered a much sharper decline than in the run-up to previous global recessions.
Global inflation is forecast to rise from 4.7 per cent in 2021 to 6.5 per cent in 2023 and 4.1 per cent by 2024.
As central banks continue to raise interest rates in response to inflation, the world may be edging toward a global recession in 2023 and a string of financial crises in emerging markets and developing economies.
According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, multinationals are exposed to high-risk scenarios ranging from controllable risks, such as raw material price fluctuation, cyber security risks, currency fluctuation, market changes or fuel price volatility, to uncontrollable ones such as natural disasters.
This calls for prioritising and aggregating threats to identify the highest-risk products and value-chain nodes with the greatest failure potential.
Kenyan banks investing regionally ought to establish a risk-management framework and persistently identify and monitor risks that may damage their organisation.
One of the clearest benefits of this initiative is the increased security and sustainability concerns of such ambitious ventures.
There is a need to apprehend supply chain vulnerabilities before they become threats and react more quickly when they occur.
Supply Chain Security ought to be a firm’s number one priority.
Globally operating organizations should maintain a system for timely supply chain inspection and regularly perform supply chain analysis to address supply chain vulnerabilities from time to time by updating, isolating, or eliminating possible risks.
A comprehensive supply chain security plan is necessary for organizations with a global presence to equip them with an intuitive decision-making approach to risks.
Kenyan banks operating regionally should apply strict security standards to their operations including evaluating key security risks and applying security metrics as risk-based scoring to protect their organization effectively.
Otieno Panya is a lecturer and researcher at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
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