Table of Contents
An investment company owned by Kenyan politician Musalia Mudavadi will pay Absa Group Ltd. 3 billion shillings ($23.2 million) for controlling stakes in two Kenyan insurers, a price below the 3.8 billion shillings the bank had been expected to seek.
The buyer, First Assurance Investments Ltd., is acquiring Absa's 63.32% stake in First Assurance Co., a general insurer, and the same share of Absa Life Assurance Kenya Ltd. Absa announced the agreement in August. The deal needs approval from Kenya's Insurance Regulatory Authority.
The sale returns control of First Assurance to the group of Kenyan investors who sold it to Barclays Africa, as Absa was then known, in 2015 for 2.2 billion shillings ($17 million). They are now paying 800 million shillings more to take it back, along with the life insurance business Barclays set up alongside it.
Who is buying
Mudavadi, Kenya's Prime Cabinet Secretary, is the largest backer of First Assurance Investments. The company is 52.5% owned by Syndicate Nominees, which Mudavadi told parliament in 2022 belongs to him, and 47.5% by Exclusive Holding Ltd., a Mombasa-based investment firm.
Lamu Governor Issa Timamy is a director and shareholder of First Assurance Investments, according to regulatory filings and court documents.
Mudavadi also holds a direct 12.35% stake in First Assurance through Syndicate Nominees, giving him a combined interest of about 21% before the Absa purchase. Other minority shareholders include businessman Stephen Githiga, Chandaria Ventures and Epoch Investments, a company linked to Jambojet chairman Ayisi Makatiani.
Mudavadi, 66, declared a net worth of 4.1 billion shillings ($31.7 million) when he was vetted for his cabinet post in October 2022. His declared holdings included real estate at Nairobi's Riverside Estate, office blocks, a helicopter leasing company and shares in Absa Bank Kenya and First Assurance. He served briefly as Kenya's vice president in 2002 and 2003 and was deputy prime minister from 2008 to 2013.
Why Absa is selling
The sale is part of a wider retreat by Johannesburg-based Absa from owning insurers in its African markets outside South Africa. The bank has already sold its insurance units in Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique to Hollard, and now prefers to sell other companies' policies through its branches.
That model has been lucrative in Kenya. Absa Bank Kenya's bancassurance business grew its net profit 35% to 1.3 billion shillings ($10.1 million) in 2025, the most of any bank in the country. Absa Life Assurance Kenya, by contrast, saw its net profit fall 26% to 790.1 million shillings ($6.1 million).
Absa Life, licensed in 2015, was the first life insurer in Kenya to sell its products through a bank. It ranks seventh among the country's life insurers, while First Assurance is the 13th-largest general insurer.
First Assurance traces its history to 1930, when it began trading in Kenya as Prudential Assurance Co. Kenyan investors completed a buyout of its British owners in 1991.
The intelligence satisfies curiosity. The paid briefings satisfy strategy.
Every Monday, Elite subscribers receive an Investor Memo breaking down the deal, the structure and the positioning behind the week's most consequential African wealth story — the kind of analysis that doesn't appear anywhere else.
Twice a month, a Wealth Intelligence brief profiles a single billionaire's holdings, cash flows and expansion pipeline in detail no public source matches.
→ Executive ($25/mo): Daily newsletter + Deep-Dive Reports
→ Elite ($75/mo): Everything above + Investor Memos + Wealth Intelligence + Quarterly Analyst Briefings
Subscribe now
