Equity Group plans two new insurance businesses in the DRC

Equity Group is planning to establish two insurance businesses in the Democratic Republic of Congo, deepening its commitment to the country that has become the banking group’s most profitable international subsidiary and its primary template for expansion into Southern Africa.

CEO James Mwangi confirmed the insurance plans as part of a broader DRC strategy, Business Today Kenya reported on Thursday. The two entities would add insurance to the financial services ecosystem Equity has been building in the country since acquiring ProCredit Bank Congo in 2015 and subsequently merging it with Banque Commerciale du Congo in 2020 to create Equity BCDC.

Equity BCDC is now the second-largest bank in the DRC by market share. In Q1 2026, the subsidiary posted a 32 percent year-on-year increase in profit to KSh5 billion, one of the fastest-growing contributions to the group’s total earnings. For the full year 2025, the DRC operation delivered a 58 percent jump in profit to KSh24.7 billion, outpacing every other regional subsidiary in absolute profit growth.

The DRC insurance expansion mirrors the model Equity has already deployed successfully in Kenya, where Equity Life Assurance Kenya launched in March 2022 and reached fourth position in the Kenyan insurance industry by gross written premiums within its first year. In Q1 2026, Equity Insurance Group, which includes the Kenyan operation and other insurance-related businesses, grew gross written premiums 30 percent to KSh4.5 billion with profit before tax up 53 percent. The group’s insurance arm has become what Mwangi describes as the third pillar of the business alongside banking and financial technology.

The DRC presents a fundamentally different but potentially larger insurance opportunity than Kenya. Approximately 94 percent of the DRC’s population remains unbanked, and insurance penetration is minimal. The scale of the underpenetrated market, combined with Equity BCDC’s existing customer base of millions and its 24 percent market share in commercial banking, gives Equity a distribution platform for insurance products that most entrants to the DRC market could not replicate without decades of relationship building.

Mwangi’s 2030 target for the group is 15 countries and 100 million customers. The DRC, already the group’s most commercially important market outside Kenya, is central to reaching both figures.