KCB Group has been recognised among the world’s top-performing banks in the inaugural Forbes World’s Top Performing Banks 2026 ranking, highlighting its financial performance and resilience on the global banking stage.
The ranking, produced by Forbes in partnership with market research firm Statista, features 500 leading banks across 89 countries and offers a global assessment of high-performing financial institutions across different markets.
Unlike Forbes’ existing bank rankings, which rely largely on customer evaluations, the new ranking is based on objective financial data from leading providers, desk research and information submitted by participating banks. The approach was designed to provide a comprehensive assessment using the latest available financial information.
To qualify, banks were required to be licensed deposit-taking institutions with lending to retail or corporate customers as a core business. They also had to report under reconcilable national accounting standards, publish audited financial statements for their most recent fiscal year, provide at least three consecutive years of financial data and have more than US$3 billion in assets.
Eligible institutions were assessed across four key areas: profitability, growth and earnings quality, capital and funding resilience, and asset quality and efficiency.
Profitability accounted for 30 per cent of the overall assessment, while growth and earnings quality contributed 20 per cent. Capital and funding resilience and asset quality and efficiency each accounted for 25 per cent.
The assessment considered indicators including return on average assets, cost-to-income ratio, net interest margin, earnings growth, customer deposit growth, capital strength, loan-to-deposit ratios, credit quality and balance sheet resilience.
Forbes and Statista also grouped banks into six asset-based tiers to ensure institutions were compared against peers of similar size. The categories ranged from global banks with more than US$500 billion in assets to small banks with between US$3 billion and US$10 billion in assets.
KCB Group’s inclusion in the inaugural ranking places the Kenyan banking group among a select group of financial institutions demonstrating strong performance across key measures of profitability, growth, resilience and efficiency.
The recognition adds to KCB’s growing profile as one of Africa’s leading banking institutions and underscores the competitiveness of Kenyan banks in the global financial sector.