Last lesson you saw how a bank earns money on the spread between what it pays and charges. Today you'll see where that money actually sits — and answer the question every depositor quietly wants answered: could this bank pay me back if I asked for my money tomorrow?
In Lesson 2 you saw Safaricom's balance sheet: it owns network equipment and licences (assets), and owes suppliers and lenders (liabilities). A bank like Equity Group Holdings owns and owes completely different things, and the labels can feel backwards the first time you see them:
So a bank's core business, in balance-sheet terms, is: take in deposits (a liability), and turn a large share of that money into loans (an asset) that earn more interest than the bank pays out on the deposits. That spread is exactly the Net Interest Income you met in the previous lesson — this lesson shows you the balance sheet that produces it.
Below are Equity Group's confirmed, audited balance sheet figures. Note the currency unit: Equity Group reports in Shs thousands ('000), not millions like Safaricom — always check the unit before comparing two companies' numbers.
| Shs '000 | FY2024 | FY2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Loans and advances to customers (net) | 887,379,832 | 819,235,956 |
| Total assets | 1,804,624,428 | 1,821,434,520 |
| Customer deposits | 1,399,648,121 | 1,358,227,584 |
| Total liabilities | 1,557,758,334 | 1,603,299,418 |
| Total shareholders' funds (equity) | 246,864,094 | 218,135,102 |
Source: Equity Group Holdings PLC Audited Financial Statements and Other Disclosures for the Year Ended 31st December 2024 (Group column; audited, currency Shs thousands).
Check the same equation you learned in Lesson 2 still holds: assets = liabilities + equity. For FY2024: 1,557,758,334 + 246,864,094 = 1,804,622,428, which matches total assets of 1,804,624,428 to within KShs 2,000 — a rounding difference in the published accounts, not a mistake in this lesson.
Two lines matter most for understanding what Equity Group actually does day to day:
Notice loans (887.4bn) are smaller than deposits (1,399.6bn). The bank hasn't lent out every shilling it holds — some sits in cash, government securities, and other assets, partly so it can meet withdrawals without a fire sale of loans.
You don't need Basel ratios to build basic intuition here. One plain question: if some loans turned out to be uncollectible, does the bank have enough of its own money (equity) to absorb that loss before it touches what it owes depositors?
Equity Group's total shareholders' funds were Shs 246,864,094 thousand in FY2024, against total assets of Shs 1,804,624,428 thousand — equity is about 13.7% of total assets (246,864,094 ÷ 1,804,624,428). That 13.7% is the cushion: it's how much asset value could shrink before liabilities (mostly depositor money) stopped being fully covered. This is not an official regulatory solvency ratio, and Kenyan banks report proper capital-adequacy figures to the Central Bank separately, but it's a fair beginner-level gut check on financial statements alone.
A company you met earlier — Safaricom — funded about 47.6% of its assets with other people's money (total liabilities of KShs 305,416.4m against total assets of KShs 641,164.3m, FY2024). Equity Group funded about 86.3% of its assets with other people's money (Shs 1,557,758,334 thousand of total liabilities against Shs 1,804,624,428 thousand of total assets, FY2024) — nearly double Safaricom's leverage. For an ordinary company that gap would be a red flag; for a bank, it's completely normal: taking deposits and lending them out is the business model, not a warning sign. You'll compare the two companies' leverage directly in a later lesson — for now, just notice that "how much debt is too much" depends heavily on what kind of company you're looking at.
Next lesson, we'll start building ratios properly, beginning with profitability margins using Safaricom's numbers — and tie the margin drop straight back to the revenue-up/profit-down red flag from Lesson 1.
Primary source for this lesson's numbers: Equity Group Holdings PLC Audited Financial Statements and Other Disclosures for the Year Ended 31st December 2024.
Something unclear, or want to dig into a line item we skipped (like "what counts as a government security on a bank's balance sheet")? Ask your teacher — that's what these sessions are for.