Equity Group develops AI tool to predict staff departures

By Grace Kim

Equity Group reported 3,198 hires in 2025 as staff costs rose 18% to KES 39.5 billion ($303.9 million), while the Kenya-based lender is developing an AI tool to forecast employee departures.

Equity Group, Nairobi-based and Kenya’s second-largest lender by assets, said in its 2025 sustainability report that it was developing “predictive analytics to forecast attrition and identify risk windows.” Earlier warnings would help managers decide when to intervene to retain employees and where to prepare for staffing gaps.

“Early insight into potential employee turnover would support targeted retention actions and sustainable staffing strategies to ensure reinforcement and retention of critical talent and preparation for such situations in a sustainable way,” Equity said in the sustainability report.

What does Equity’s forecasting tool do?

Equity Group’s initiative responds to competition among fintechs, telcos and rival lenders for the same digital and payments talent. The company wants to retain specialist employees as much as it wants to hire, while giving managers more time to fill critical roles.

The group gave no launch date. Its report describes the approach as predictive analytics but leaves open how the model will work, what employee data it will use, and whether it will flag individuals or forecast turnover across teams and markets.

Equity has defined the warning it wants, but not the system that will produce it.

What do the workforce numbers show?

Equity Group reported net employment turnover of 10.6% in 2025, down from 11.1% in 2024. The improvement was smaller than the previous one: turnover had fallen from 17% in 2023 to about 11% in 2024.

Hiring nearly doubled to 3,198 people in 2025, while the overall workforce grew 2.2% to 13,370. The permanent workforce rose by nearly 1,000, while temporary employees fell by almost 700.

Staff costs increased 18% to KES 39.5 billion ($303.9 million), from KES 33.4 billion ($257 million) a year earlier.

The figures show a larger, more permanent workforce at higher cost, even as the rate of departures eased only modestly.

How is Equity trying to retain talent?

Average training time rose to 74 hours per employee in 2025 from 45 hours the previous year, and Equity made some generative AI courses mandatory for all staff.

The bank advertises vacancies internally first and offers incentives for employees with critical skills and those in leadership roles. It is also formalising career paths that let technical specialists advance without taking on management duties.

Equity is bringing workforce records and performance data from across its markets into a single human resources system. That centralization can support a common view of staffing and skills as the group expands.

Its measures focus on keeping scarce skills inside the group and giving specialists more ways to advance.

Why does staffing reach beyond Kenya?

Equity’s businesses outside Kenya account for a growing share of earnings. Regional banking subsidiaries generated 48% of banking profit after tax in 2025, with the Democratic Republic of Congo alone contributing KES 24.7 billion.

The group already sends specialists from its head office on secondment to subsidiaries that need their expertise. That practice puts staffing directly alongside the group’s cross-border expansion and use of scarce technical skills.

For a bank earning 48% of banking profit after tax from regional subsidiaries, effective deployment of talent matters across the whole group, not only in Nairobi.

Equity has stated the retention case and begun centralizing workforce data, but the operating details of the forecast remain absent. Equity’s next disclosure on launch timing, model inputs and forecast scope will show whether the AI project becomes a working staffing tool or remains a planning-stage initiative.