Equity Group turns to AI to predict staff exits and retain talent

Equity Group, Kenya’s second-largest lender by assets, is developing an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to forecast staff departures, as it seeks to retain specialist employees and give managers more time to fill critical roles.

The Nairobi-based group said in its 2025 sustainability report that it was developing “predictive analytics to forecast attrition and identify risk windows.” Equity said earlier warnings would help it decide when to intervene to retain employees and where to prepare for staffing gaps.

Equity’s move to use AI to predict staff departures reflects a challenge for Kenya’s banks. As fintechs, telcos, and rival lenders compete for the same pool of digital and payments talent, keeping experienced staff has become as important as hiring them.

“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.

Net employment turnover fell to 10.6% last year from 11.1% in 2024. The decline was smaller than the improvement in the previous year, when Equity reported turnover falling from 17% in 2023 to about 11% in 2024.

The bank nearly doubled hiring to 3,198 people in 2025, while its overall workforce grew by 2.2% to 13,370. Its permanent workforce rose by nearly 1,000, while temporary employees fell by almost 700. Staff costs rose 18% to KES 39.5 billion ($303.9 million) from KES 33.4 billion ($257 million) a year earlier.

The push to retain specialist staff comes as Equity’s businesses outside Kenya account for a growing share of its earnings. Its 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 and is bringing workforce records and performance data from across its markets into a single human resources system.

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

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

The group gave no launch date for the forecasting tool. Its report describes the approach as predictive analytics and 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.