I&M Is Walking Away From Mass-Market Banking in Mauritius

Kenya’s I&M Group is gradually pulling its Mauritius joint venture Bank One away from retail banking and refocusing the business on high-net-worth individuals and large corporations, as the lender seeks to concentrate capital and expertise on higher-value financial services.

The strategic shift began in the first quarter of 2026 and involves Bank One, which I&M owns jointly with Mauritian conglomerate CIEL Finance, Africa Intelligence reported on Tuesday. The publication did not disclose the extent of the planned reduction in retail operations.

I&M did not immediately provide details of the reported shift when contacted. Bank One’s latest public disclosures show that the lender was still operating a consumer banking business spanning retail, premium and business banking, while also expanding private banking, wealth management and corporate and institutional banking.

The move would mark a change in emphasis for a bank that has historically maintained a broad retail offering in Mauritius. Bank One’s website continues to list retail products including accounts, deposits, loans, cards and digital banking services, while its private banking operation targets affluent individuals and families.

The repositioning also reflects a broader difference in I&M’s regional strategy. In Kenya, the group has spent the past several years moving aggressively into retail and small and medium-sized enterprise banking, helping it overtake NCBA in total assets during the first quarter of 2026.

I&M’s group assets reached about $5.8 billion at the end of June 2026, up 27% from a year earlier, while customer deposits rose 18% to about $3.9 billion and net loans increased 15% to about $2.6 billion. Profit after tax rose 22% to about $79 million in the first half.

The Kenyan expansion has included a heavy investment in digital retail banking. About 25,000 people were opening I&M accounts each month through a digital onboarding process by September, with about 85% of retail accounts opened digitally, according to an interview with Group Director for Digital Business Eunice Gatama.

That strategy has helped I&M broaden its customer base beyond its traditional corporate and institutional franchise. Business Daily reported in June that I&M’s assets had reached about $5.8 billion in March, narrowly exceeding NCBA’s roughly $5.7 billion, making it Kenya’s fourth-largest bank by assets.

Mauritius presents a different banking opportunity. The country’s financial system is heavily exposed to corporate, international and wealth-management activity. Bank of Mauritius data showed total banking-sector deposits of about $44 billion at the end of 2024, with corporate deposits accounting for 46% of the total. Household deposits stood at roughly $12.3 billion, while non-resident deposits were about $11.3 billion.

That structure makes corporate, international banking and wealth management particularly important businesses for banks seeking scale without competing as aggressively for mass-market customers.

Bank One has already been building those capabilities. Its 2025 annual report said its corporate and institutional banking business had been reorganised around global business corporations, financial institutions, international corporates and domestic corporates. It also said assets under custody had crossed $1 billion and assets under management reached $1.5 billion during the year.

The bank’s consumer business was simultaneously being redesigned. Its 2025 report said Bank One had completed the transition from Personal Financial Services to a more integrated Consumer Banking model, covering retail, premium and business banking, while rationalising branches and increasing cooperation between consumer and private banking.

The apparent pivot therefore looks less like a withdrawal from Mauritius than a change in where Bank One wants to compete. Its corporate and international franchises can use Mauritius’s position as a financial centre and gateway to Africa, while its private banking and wealth-management operations can target clients with substantially larger balances and more fee-generating investment needs.

Bank One’s own disclosures point in that direction. The lender said in its 2025 report that it was strengthening its corporate and institutional banking franchise, expanding trade finance and syndication, deepening Sub-Saharan African corridor flows and increasing offshore deposit mobilisation.

The financial results also suggest the business is not being abandoned. In the third quarter of 2025, Bank One’s profit before tax rose 4% in local currency, while loans declined 4% and deposits increased 31%, according to I&M Group.

Kenyan regulators’ data also shows Bank One remains a sizeable regional operation. Its assets increased to about $1.45 billion in 2025 from roughly $1.18 billion in 2024, according to figures reported from the Central Bank of Kenya’s 2025 banking supervision report. I&M holds a 50% stake in the Mauritian lender.

The shift comes as I&M prepares for the next phase of its regional strategy. Its current iMara 3.0 strategy runs through 2026 and has emphasised digital transformation, MSME expansion, regional integration and new revenue streams including digital credit, merchant services and embedded finance.

I&M’s growing regional technology infrastructure could also allow Bank One to maintain digital services without retaining the same physical retail footprint. In September, I&M announced a trade-finance technology partnership that will begin in Kenya before being expanded to Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Bank One in Mauritius.

The Mauritius decision could represent a more selective allocation of capital rather than a retreat from the country. In Kenya and other East African markets, the group is using scale, branches and digital channels to acquire retail and SME customers.

In Mauritius, it appears increasingly focused on businesses where its cross-border banking, treasury, trade-finance and wealth-management capabilities can command larger relationships and potentially higher fee income.

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