Standard Chartered Bank Kenya plans to sell its current headquarters building in Nairobi as it continues scaling back its physical presence in the country in favour of digital banking.
Disclosures show that the lender has earmarked the Chiromo Building, located in Nairobi’s Westlands area, for sale. StanChart has valued the building, which sits on 1.88 acres, at Sh1.411 billion. The property was designated as held for sale in June 2025.
‘The Chiromo disclosure in Standard Chartered Bank Kenya’s 2025 annual report reflects a strategic property and capital optimisation initiative and is fully compliant with applicable financial reporting requirements. It does not indicate any change to the bank’s operations or long-term commitment to Kenya,’ StanChart said in response to a Business Daily inquiry.
The lender, in its annual report for 2025, valued assets held for sale at Sh3.06 billion. Assets held for sale are non-current assets that have been committed for disposal and are expected to be sold within a year.
The cost of an acre of land in Westlands averages Sh501 million, according to the HassConsult land pricing index. Going by the valuation, the land hosting the seven-storey commercial building should fetch about Sh1 billion.
Property shift
The bank has been putting its properties on the market for the past five years.
The sale of the real estate holdings signals a move in favour of renting over ownership, a shift that would see the lender focus on its core business.
StanChart estimates a market rental value of Sh196 million from the building. The bank announced it sold its Treasury Square building in Mombasa and the Nyeri branch last year.
The Mombasa property had been on the market for five years without a buyer, having been earmarked for sale in June 2020.
The sale followed the bank’s decision to revalue Treasury Square downwards by Sh23.4 million to Sh198.6 million in 2024. The property, which hosts the first branch opened in the country in 1911, had initially been valued at Sh222 million.
The Nyeri property was put up for sale in 2024 with a valuation of Sh175 million.
Disclosures in the bank’s annual report show that it sold freehold land and buildings worth Sh215.2 million last year.
Lean footprint
StanChart will remain with two properties in the country, one in Nairobi and the other in Nanyuki. The bank has a 0.38-acre plot on Kenyatta Avenue and a single-storey building on the main Nanyuki-Meru Highway.
Standard Chartered has been scaling back its operations in Africa, with the London-based bank exiting Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Tanzania. It has also sold portions of its businesses in Botswana, Zambia and Uganda.
The lender has cut its branch network by nearly half in Kenya over the past decade as digital banking takes root.
StanChart currently has 22 branches, down from 42 outlets in 2016, with 96 percent of its transactions being non-branch.
The digital shift has seen the lender cut staff numbers each year for 11 consecutive years, reducing its total workforce to below 1,000 last year.
The bank has 942 employees, having cut 59 jobs last year, incurring redundancy costs of Sh112.27 million in the year ended December.