The High Court in Nairobi has finally put Kenya Commercial Bank in its place. Two borrowers who took a loan of about Ksh 640,000 walked away with an award of Ksh 3.7 million after the court found the bank guilty of overcharging them for years and then refusing to explain where their money went.
Justice W.A. Okwany ruled that KCB had hiked interest rates without any legal or contractual right, sometimes pushing them as high as 54 percent.
The bank then lumped different facilities together, claimed the customers still owed money, and started threatening to auction their properties.
The borrowers, Mua and Company Limited and Evans Mukunga Mua, showed they had already paid more than Ksh 3.3 million between 1986 and 1995.
An independent auditor confirmed the overpayment. Even the bank itself admitted in a 2003 letter that it had overcharged them and refunded part of the money. Yet it still fought the case for over a decade.
The court ordered KCB to pay back the proven overpayment of Ksh 695,160.81 plus Ksh 3 million in damages for the stress, threats and damage to the borrowers’ reputation.
The bank must also remove the charges it registered against their land. Its counterclaim was thrown out completely.
This is not a small accounting error. It is a pattern.
KCB treated these customers the same way many people say the bank treats its own staff.
When customers question their statements, the bank digs in. When employees raise complaints about bullying or harassment, the complaints disappear into silence.
The same institution that ignored clear overcharging on a modest loan is the same one whose internal systems have been accused of protecting powerful managers while ordinary people suffer the consequences.
Banks exist to hold people’s money safely and to charge only what the law and the contract allow.
When a bank instead invents higher interest rates, refuses to show a clear account of payments, and then threatens to seize property, it stops being a bank and starts acting like a bully with a licence. KCB is one of Kenya’s largest banks.
That size should bring responsibility, not immunity. The fact that it took a High Court judgment in 2025 to force the bank to account for transactions that began in the early 1990s shows how long customers can wait for justice.
Regulators cannot keep looking only at balance sheets and capital ratios. A bank that overcharges customers and then fights them in court for years is not being properly governed.
The Central Bank of Kenya has a duty to protect the public whose money sits in these institutions. This judgment should force a hard look at how KCB handles customer accounts, how it sets interest rates, and whether its internal checks actually work.
Customers should take note. Keep every receipt, every statement, every payment slip. Demand written explanations. Do not assume the bank’s numbers are correct just because the bank is big.
This case proves that even a large institution can be forced to pay when the evidence is clear. KCB has been ordered to pay nearly four million shillings and to release the borrowers’ properties.
That is the least it can do after years of overcharging and threats. The real test is whether the bank changes the way it treats the next customer who dares to question the figures.
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