Inquiries for borrowers’ profiles from credit reference bureaus (CRBs) jumped 23 per cent in 2025 as commercial banks, stepping up lending to the private sector, sought to make decisions on their ability to repay.
A freshly published annual report by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) showed that credit reports requested by commercial banks and microfinance banks increased significantly by 23 per cent from 38.6 million in 2024 to 47.3 million in 2025.
“The growth in credit report requests is attributable to growth in commercial banks’ lending to the private sector in 2025,” CBK said.
The Central Bank of Kenya.
Photo credit: File
“Lending to the private sector grew by 5.9 per cent in December 2025, having improved from negative 2.9 per cent in January 2025”
Lower borrowing costs partly encouraged banks to increase lending to businesses and households after nearly two years of elevated interest rates suppressed credit demand and slowed investment across the private sector.
Gross loans increased by 6.8 percent from Sh4 trillion in December 2024 to Sh4.34 trillion in 2025, according to the CBK.
The largest proportion of the banking industry’s gross loans and advances were channelled to the personal and household, trade, manufacturing, and real estate sectors.
“In total, these four economic sectors accounted for 72.1 percent of gross loans in December 2025. Personal and household, trade, and agriculture sectors accounted for the highest number of loan accounts with a total of 98.9percent.
Trade, real estate, manufacturing, and personal and household sectors accounted for the highest value of non-performing loans by registering 72.6 per cent. This was mainly due to a challenging business environment.
On the other hand, the CBK said the requests for credit reports by individual customers decreased by five per cent from 927,394 in 2024 to 879,195 in 2025. The increase in credit reports was mainly in the second half of 2025 as credit demand picked up.
The CBK data showed that requests for credit reports declined by 21 per cent from 12.2 million in quarter one to 9.6 million in quarter two.
“However, the requests rose again from quarter two through to quarter three by 35 per cent. Quarter three registered the highest requests of 13 million, with a monthly average of 4.3 million requests. The month of December had the highest requests with 5.4 million requests compared to the other months,” the apex bank said.
The number of third-party data sources stood at 2,241 in the year 2025, having decreased from 2,824 in the previous year.
CRBs terminated partnerships with 621 non-deposit taking saccos, accounting for 30 per cent, from 2,040 in 2024 to 1,419 in 2025.
The third-party data sources complement information provided by mandatory CRB subscribers, including commercial banks, microfinance banks, deposit-taking Saccos, and digital credit providers.
