Equity Banks Finserve boss Jack Ngare moves to Microsoft

Managing Director to Equity Group’s digital finance subsidiary Finserve Africa-Jack Ngare has ditched the lender for global tech giant Microsoft.

While insiders had already confirmed the impending exit of Mr. Ngare from the Group’s fintech arm, Microsoft on Tuesday confirmed Ngare’s appointment as the new Managing Director for its newly launched Africa Development Centre (ADC).

“We’ve been adding to our team of engineers aggressively and to have Jack in this talented group is fantastic,” said Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President and ADC project lead Mike Fortin.

Ngare’s exit follows the departure of the bank’s Managing Director Polycarp Igathe who rejoins his former employer Vivo Energy on a regional marketing role at the end of the month.

Mr. Ngare has over his stay at Equity Bank overseen the launch of Finserve Africa, a disruption to traditional banking, and the subsequent launch of new innovative products to include Equitel, Mkey and the Jenga Payment Gateway.

The innovative products which are based on application programming interfaces (APIs) have opened up Equity banking platforms to over 2000 small and medium enterprises at present.

Mr. Ngare has been a key ‘techie’ at the bank with his exit compounding the loss of talent by the giant lender.

He holds a masters degree in advanced Computer Science from the Harvard University in addition to his elementary Computer Science degree from the University of Leicester.

Ngare has previously held stints at the British Telecommunications (BT) global services, Stanbic and NIC banks across East Africa.