Grand Maître

Jubilee Holdings announced this week that Dr Julius Kipngetich retires as Group CEO on 30 November, with Juan Cazarra taking over on the 1st of December 2026. Nearly nine years at the helm. Which sends me back to my notes from September. He was one of my lecturers at United States International University - Africa back in 1994 or 1995. On the 8th of September 2026 he opened the Kenya Teachers Sacco Association (KETSA) Annual CEOs' Workshop in Mombasa and told a room of SACCO chief executives: "Saving and credit is a tired product. It is for Gen Xs and boomers." He also mentioned that he planned to retire at the end of the year. None of us made much of it at the time. Two months on, it means what I sat through was one of the last big public keynotes of his tenure. He did not spend it on Jubilee. Here is what he spent it on instead: 1/ Kenya saves about 12% of income. Uganda 23%, Tanzania 21%. Vision 2030 targeted 30% and we have never once reached it. 2/ The bigger drain is tax. He put the combined burden at roughly 40% of income, then made the more explicit point: at 40% Kenya should be a welfare state. Instead we pay again, privately, for security, water and school. 3/ Then there are dead assets - anything you own that pays you nothing. The rural home nobody lives in. The plot you are holding. Five acres of maize. "Food crop can never be a cash crop. Ever." 4/ Get out of bank fixed deposits. Banks pay you single digits, then lend the same money to government at double digits. "They keep quiet because they have to exploit somebody who is not clever enough to see they are being exploited." 5/ His hierarchy: SACCO first, then a money market fund, then Treasury bills and bonds, then infrastructure bonds - interest tax-free - then equities. 6/ On property: Kenyan real estate yields around 7%, government paper pays more, risk-free. "Have you ever seen a Jubilee Tower? You will never see one." He sits on the committee that says no. 7/ Retirement is where the money actually disappears. "A fence has no income." Then the most candid line of the day: "Most of our members, post-retirement, they never live more than 10 years." 8/ On governance he did not go lightly at all. "You move a primary school teacher, you bring them to a board which manages 30 billion. Nobody has trained them." Members keep the vote, he said — but elect for a different calibre. 9/ "Somebody has to bell the cat, and I wanted to say it openly today." That last line reads very differently now. He knew he was leaving. He said it anyway — to a room that had no obligation to listen to him. A CEO on his way out could have taken a victory lap. He chose to tell other people's chief executives that their core product is finished. Asante sana, Dr Kipngetich. 30 years on, still learning from you! Read The Blog Post: bit.ly/4ecip8N #SACCO #Kenya #FinancialServices #KETSA #Jubilee #Leadership #PersonalFinance #Africa @Kipngetichjk @JubileeGroupKE – at Nairobi, Kenya