Foreword

Welcome to the 2021 edition of Financial Focus, PwC’s industry publication for the financial services sector in the East Africa region. Our last edition was published in July 2020, during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. So much has happened since then and it now feels like such a long time ago. For many organisations, that was the beginning of new ways of working and providing services. The last year has been extraordinary in every sense of the word; it has tested our resilience, our systems and processes, our technologies and our business models. This publication is an effort to put many of these changes in context for the financial services industry, and to offer insight into what we can anticipate going forward. The PwC practitioners who have written for this publication provide analysis of relevant trends and topics based on their direct experience working in the East Africa region. The nature of our business is to help solve important problems with clients and contacts like you, our readers. We work with financial services institutions of many kinds, including multinational banks, savings and credit societies, insurers and reinsurers, fintechs, microfinance organisations and telecommunications companies offering mobile money services. It would not be an exaggeration to observe that our definition of ‘financial services’ broadens every time we publish Financial Focus!

Increasingly, we are having more and more conversations with our clients, colleagues and contacts about what we call our ‘Greater Societal Purpose’. Organisations of all kinds are thinking about their purpose, their role in society, and how to operate more sustainably going forward. It seems to me that purpose-driven societal responsibility is absolutely essential now and financial services institutions tend to be very conscious of it. Like you, we want to be part of the solution. And the pandemic has taught us that by working together, we can solve some very important problems indeed. On behalf of the partners and staff of PwC firms in Kenya, Mauritius, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, I hope that you enjoy reading these articles and find them useful. Please feel free to contact me or any other other contributors should you wish to discuss these topics in more detail.