How strategic planning culture has made Equity Bank remain at the top of micro finance banking in Africa and the world

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the culture of strategic planning has made Equity bank to remain at the top of microfinance banking in Kenya, Africa and the world. Equity Bank has revolutionized the banking concept in Kenya and has made banking accessible to majority of the Kenyan and East African population. The bank has done well where others have failed especially on reaching out to the bottom of the pyramid segment. Equity bank has a very strong institutional culture of strategic planning that has helped in its growth and expansion. The employees in the bank treat their jobs like a calling to liberate the people of Africa and its either you fit or you don’t fit in that culture. This culture has seen employees giving their best in terms of time and energy which has seen the company record excellent performance over the years. The study used descriptive research design. The target group was the middle level managers in the Bank. Semi-structured questionnaires and key informant interviews were used as the instruments for data collection. Data was presented by the use of both descriptive and inferential statistics. The study revealed that Equity Bank had several strategic management practices which touched on formulation, implementation and evaluation. These included selfassessment, competition analysis, resource allocation, strategic management procedures. The bank had a very strong organizational culture which it leveraged on to push the strategic agenda. The study concludes by retaliating that adoption of strategic planning practices and institutionalization of a supportive institutional culture are great drivers of organizational performance.