BY ANTONY MUTUNGA Social distancing and staying at home have become the new norm for most in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has not only seen hygiene take centre stage around world but has also elicited the argument on whether it is time to fully adopt a cashless society? The pandemic has seen the use of physical cash reduce especially in developed countries. As customers make the shift to rely on plastic money, businesses that had already adopted cashless transactions are soaring as compared to those whose only mode of transaction is by way of hard cash. With…
Author: NBM CORRESPONDENT
EY, SAP, and Qualtrics have announced a collaboration to provide resources to governments around the world as they battle the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic. These Qualtrics® and SAP® solutions will be implemented by EY and include tools to help governments pre-screen and route potential COVID-19 patients, support healthcare workers, and manage the flow of information and resources to their citizens. To help manage the impact of the pandemic, EY, SAP, and Qualtrics have collaborated on providing agencies with a comprehensive set of services and solutions to meet the initial urgent and critical needs of governments, globally. These offerings are helping…
BY OLUKAYODE KOLAWOLE The advent of the novel coronavirus disease, also known as COVID-19 seems to have destabilized our social norms and behaviour. Nigeria, like all other countries of the world where this pandemic has visited, has responded by both treating the people who have contracted the disease and putting some preventive measures in place to minimize the rate to which her citizens get infected. Some of the measures the government has put in place to forestall transmission of the virus include the restriction on movement, closure of schools, ordering some cadres of the employees to stay home for some…
Banking Trojans or ‘bankers’ are one of the most widespread tools for cybercriminals as they focus on stealing money In 2019, 773,943 users of Kaspersky solutions globally were attacked by banking Trojans. Of those users, a third (35.1%) were in the corporate sector. African countries were affected too: almost every hundredth user (varying from 0,9 to 1%) in South Africa, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Kenya was attacked by banking Trojans at least once during the past year, yet the share of affected corporate users varied greatly in these countries according to Kaspersky’s 2019 analysis of the financial threat landscape. Banking Trojans…
Unprecedented and highly volatile global conditions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic are driving high-net-worth individuals to reassess the concept of secure investment value and how best to safeguard their families and their wealth against future shocks. According to the latest Knigth Frank report, the investment portfolio of an ultra-high-net-worth individual comprises of 27% real estate investment, which is also the largest portion of the portfolio. Over the last decade, foreign real estate investors have abandoned further development plans in Kenya, and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic investors are exiting altogether — causing local investors to look to European…
BY MUTAVA MICHAEL MULEI I am listening to the radio and the presenter is boldly shouting that there is nothing new under the sun. What a scam! How can that be true? A few clean memories and ideas are going through my mind, never mind a lot of people’s bodies have been far from clean in these unprecedented times of the novel Coronavirus. I have never seen anything like it, yet I have been under the sun for more than two decades now. Do I hear you ask what clean memories are going through my mind? Well, I am doing a mental comparison of past economic crisis with what Coronavirus is compelling us to accept and…
BY ANTONY MUTUNGA Joining the long list of losses the Coronavirus pandemic has dealt on humanity is a chocked financial sector. Resultantly, investors around the globe are in a state of panic as stock markets all over suffer losses in the trillions of dollars. It is no different for Kenya where investors rushed to sell-off their shares at the beginning of the epidemic in favour of asset classes such as gold, causing the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) to lose in the billions and halt trading. Shares that were most affected when the NSE took a massive hit included Safaricom, KCB…
While the extent of the adverse effects of the pandemic on the Kenyan economy is still evolving, it is already evident that the impact maybe severe BY GILBERT NG’ANG’A Kenyan banks face the biggest challenge for over a century as the COVID-19 pandemic tear down their foundation, with economic setbacks wiping out new loans and sending customers into non-payments, exposing them to potential failures. It is estimated that billions of shillings in loans will go bad in the coming months and millions of customers will no longer afford loans—the nucleus of banking. Economists and financial analysts are arguing that most…
BY JACOB OKETCH Deputy President Dr William Ruto is locked in a bitter struggle with Jubilee party mandarins for the control of the ruling party. Based on precedent, this tussle may not end well for him should he decide to stay the course. Right from independence, any disagreement between the President and his assistant has ended badly for the latter. Kenya’s first Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was elbowed out of the party by carefully designed steps that were not necessarily legal. Tom Mboya who was the secretary general of the ruling party orchestrated a series of measures that whittled…
BY GAD WESONGA Historical accounts indicate that Labor Day celebrations, also known as the International Workers Day or May Day were initiated in the 1880’s to recognize the efforts of the working class individuals worldwide. In Kenya, Labor Day celebrations are organized by the Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU), the umbrella body of Kenya’s workers. The ceremony is usually presided over by the COTU leadership with top cream government representatives such as Labor Minister and sometimes the President in attendance. Employers and employees in Kenya anticipate Labor Day with bated breath as they wait for the formal…