Absa has acquired Standard Chartered’s retail banking and wealth management business as part of a larger shift in the banking power sector in Uganda. The Bank of Uganda approved this transaction about two weeks ago after it also received clearance from the COMESA Competition Commission based on their findings that doing so would not result in significant changes to competition for customers in Uganda. In summary, Standard Chartered is not withdrawing from its operations in Uganda; instead, it is transitioning from mass-market consumer banking to concentrate on serving large corporations and institutional clients.
The purpose of the acquisition is to enable Absa to grow its retail banking business in Uganda by achieving a significantly higher level of scale than it currently has. The ability of a retail bank in Uganda to grow depends on its ability to attract depositors’ funds. By gaining access to the retail banking customers of Standard Chartered Bank, Absa will have the potential to reach a much larger pool of potential retail banking customers in Uganda than any other retail bank now has, since all of the competitor retail banks have the same human resources and there would be no limit to the size of the deposit base of the new combined bank. COMESA has said that the new combined retail banking company in Uganda could capture about 20% to 30% of all retail deposits and 10% to 20% of all retail loans in the country, meaning that Absa and Standard Chartered together will be able to compete with other major banks in Uganda to attract customers for both deposits and loans.
These transactions are critical because customer deposits provide the capital that banks use to create loans and make investments, as well as a continuous cash flow over time.
Absa has considerable strength as it begins this new phase. Its 2025 year-end numbers show an increase of 46.4% in customer deposits, which now totals Sh4.66 trillion and an increase in total assets of 29% to Sh7.03 trillion. Profit after tax is also up by 25.1% to Sh222 billion. At a mid-market rate of approximately USD 3,769.36 per share, the deposits are approximately USD 1.24 billion, total assets are USD 1.87 billion, and net income is USD 58.9 million. Meanwhile, Standard Chartered’s retail and wealth businesses are showing total assets of Sh3.48 trillion and customer deposits of Sh1.31 trillion, or USD 923.2 million and USD 347.5 million, respectively.
This transaction also reflects a broader continental trend in which global banks are reducing their retail presence in Africa, while regional banks are competing to acquire customers who are being abandoned by these exiting global banks. Standard Chartered has already begun this process in places like Tanzania, and similar types of transactions are happening in other countries throughout Africa. For Uganda, the sale signifies a more intense and concentrated competition to attract affluent customers, deposits, and wealth management clients; these are all the segments likely to lift margins most quickly, as rivalry continues to increase throughout the banking sector. Absa’s current position allows it to gain a quicker path to the forefront of the banking industry, as scale now dictates strategy.
