I&M Bank Kenya Names Former Absa Boss Abdi Mohamed as New CEO

I&M Group has appointed Abdi Mohamed as the new Chief Executive Officer of I&M Bank Kenya, the lender announced on Monday, 29 June 2026. The appointment still needs the green light from the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) before it takes effect.

On its own, a new bank CEO is routine. What makes this one stand out is where Mohamed is coming from. He is the sitting Chief Executive of Absa Bank Kenya, a larger rival, and he resigned from that job over the same weekend. In effect, one Kenyan bank has hired the boss of a bigger competitor. That is rare in a sector where senior bankers tend to circulate quietly rather than move straight from one rival’s corner office into another’s.

Who Abdi Mohamed is

Mohamed brings a banking career spanning more than three decades, almost all of it inside one banking family. He joined Barclays Bank Kenya in 1994, reportedly starting out as a branch teller in Garissa, and rose through the group as it became Absa. Along the way he served as Chief Operating Officer at Barclays Bank Kenya, as Retail and Business Banking Director in both Kenya and Zambia, and as Managing Director and CEO of Absa Bank Tanzania, where he oversaw the rebranding of that business from Barclays to Absa. He took the top job at Absa Bank Kenya in May 2023, a role he held for just over three years.

Outside the bank, Mohamed chairs the Kenya chapter of the United Nations Global Compact, a corporate sustainability initiative. He also sits on the boards of Touch Health Inc and Integrated Payment Services Limited (IPSL), the Kenya Bankers Association subsidiary that runs PesaLink, the bank-to-bank instant transfer service most Kenyans have used to move money between accounts.

A seat that has been open for months

The announcement does not say who Mohamed is replacing, so here is the missing context. I&M Bank Kenya’s last substantive CEO was Gul Khan, who stepped down in November 2025. Since then, the seat has been held on an interim basis by Kihara Maina, the group’s Regional CEO and himself a former I&M Bank Kenya boss. Mohamed’s appointment, once approved, fills that vacancy with a permanent hire.

Commenting on the move, Sarit Raja-Shah, Group Executive Director at I&M Group, said the board was confident Mohamed was well positioned to lead I&M Bank Kenya into its next phase of growth, and would help drive innovation and expand market share.

Why a CEO would move to a smaller bank

The obvious question is why a chief executive would leave a bigger lender for a smaller one. By market value, Absa Bank Kenya is the country’s fourth-largest listed bank, while I&M Group sits around seventh. The likely answer is room to grow. I&M is in an expansion phase, and the CEO of its flagship Kenyan business has a clear mandate to push that agenda.

I&M Group is a Tier 1 lender founded in 1974 and listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange, with banking operations in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and a joint venture in Mauritius. As we already reported in our coverage of the group’s full-year results, I&M Group posted a profit before tax of KES 24.2 billion for 2025, up 22% on the year, while the Kenyan bank Mohamed will run posted KES 17.4 billion in profit before tax, up 29%. The group has been leaning hard into digital banking, with 98% of its transacting customers now using digital channels, and recently raised KES 13 billion through a corporate bond to fund further lending and expansion.

Part of a wider banking reshuffle

Mohamed’s switch is the latest in an unusually busy year for the corner offices of Kenya’s banks. Since January 2026, Family Bank, Ecobank Kenya, Commercial International Bank Kenya, Stanbic, Standard Chartered and Sidian have all named new chief executives. Absa itself has been reshaping its leadership, and we already looked at its decision to bring in former M-PESA Africa boss Sitoyo Lopokoiyit to run personal and private banking across the continent.

At Absa Bank Kenya, Chief Financial Officer Yusuf Omari steps in as interim CEO from 1 July 2026 while the board searches for a permanent successor. Omari has held the interim role before, in 2022. Absa’s Johannesburg-based parent group is meanwhile in the market with an offer to raise its stake in the Kenyan unit. The handover also follows a softer start to the year for Absa Bank Kenya, whose profit after tax fell about 14% in the three months to March 2026 as lower interest rates squeezed lending income.

What to watch

For now, the appointment is not final. It needs CBK approval, the standard regulatory step for any Kenyan bank CEO, and the central bank has not given a timeline. If it clears, Mohamed will move from running the country’s fourth-largest listed bank to leading a smaller but faster-growing one. The practical thing to watch is whether the cost discipline and digital push he ran at Absa translate into quicker growth at I&M. The bigger signal is about ambition: a bank does not hire a rival’s sitting CEO unless it plans to compete harder for the same customers.