The history of this bank started earlier than 1984. It started when the dream for starting a Bank occurred to me way back in the early 1960s when I was a young man in High School. I lived with this dream through the 1960s to 1981 when I started visiting the Treasury looking for a license to start a Bank.

At this juncture the business was growing the branches were increasing, customer numbers were growing. Due to our limited resources we decided to focus on doing business with the lower end of the market. We also noted that the mainstream Banks were deserting this market. So we came up with suitable loan products for them.

The other reason customers came to us is because at that time both the local and foreign mainstream Banks were deserting this market and had become very insensitive to their customers needs and feelings. We at Family saw an opportunity in this behavior which we decided to exploit. With all these efforts the Kenyans could not and did not disappoint us.

Kenyans received us very warmly every Province we went to. With this support we grew in all parameters; loans, customer numbers, Assets, Deposits, and even Capital. Our strategy team later found out that as a Building Society we could sell shares to our customers and staff through private placements. Consequent upon this some 7000 customers and staff injected some Ksh 700 million as new capital. This capital helped us to seamlessly convert from a Building Society to a fully fledged commercial bank in 2007.

After conversion we experienced even faster growth. With this growth more capital was needed. We agreed on another rights issue and the balance of the unsold shares was offered to the foreign bidders. We talked to a few potential foreign investors and selected one with whom we embarked on negotiations. In the end we reached an agreement.

The partnership we have launched today will not only increase our capital to, over Kshs.3B but will also boost our liquidity and boost our deposit taking capacity to over Kshs.40 Billion. This investment will create an appetite for expanding to the Region and start planning on listing at the Nairobi Stock Exchange.

Our new profile  now stands as follows; We are currently the 5th largest in customer numbers and branch network. We are rated as a Tier One Bank meaning we are now playing at the National league of the 10 or so largest Banks in the country. This is the Bank whose New Brand Identity was launched today. This is the Bank whose New Investors we unveiled today.

We started our operations in November 1984 by renting an office along Kenyatta Avenue. We could not open a full Branch in Nairobi as we found the rent too high. We therefore moved to Kiambu where it was cheaper. We opened our first branch in 1985 and by the year 2000, we had opened 10 branches.