About 27 KCB Bank Rwanda staff will soon be rendered redundant in the bank restructuring exercise as poor performance and growing operational costs weigh heavily on the bank’s operations. The affected staff include both temporary and permanent employees, according to Maurice Toroitich, the bank’s managing director (pictured).

The lender said the ‘internal reorganisation’ process of its human resource capacity and strategy seeks to enable it to improve service delivery, as well be able to compete in the market.

Toroitich told The New Times yesterday that the bank’s business volumes and the quality of service has remained below expectation over the past years, but operational costs have risen, driving the firm to seek measures to reduce expenses and improve service delivery.

"We started with nine branches with the big capacity. We had envisaged that the business volumes would fill this capacity overtime, but has not been possible in the projected time. So we have to cut down on this capacity and hope that the volume peak up to justify additional capacity if we need it in the future,” he said.

He added, "We are saying that the capacity we have internally should fill the certain volume and that volume has not been achieved, when you look at the number of transactions we are performing in a branch on a daily basis.”

He noted that the bank is also responding to the changes taking place in the banking sector.

"High costs are becoming a big challenge to the banking sector, but we need to serve customers better and cut interest rates.

"This, therefore, requires us to review our cost structure to remain profitable and sustainable as we look towards providing more affordable banking services,” he noted in a telephone interview.

Weighing in on general banking sector performance

According to the National Bank of Rwanda, the banking industry, remained generally sound and performed satisfactorily during the first half of 2016.

However, competition has continued to grow in the sector as players try to gain more customers.

"The market has become more competitive and banks are looking to improve services but also cut costs. Margins are smaller and the customers are asking for more, but they don’t even want to pay more for it. This forces us to be more efficient and devise better ways of operations than we have done in the past,” he noted.