Standard Chartered Bank Kenya has paid pension claims to 522 out of 629 pensioners following settlement of a long-drawn petition by former workers by the Supreme Court last year.
The settlement of 83 percent of claimants, as of the end of May 2026, from the landmark ruling in September 2025, comes amid the emergence of new pension claims by workers outside those covered by the 16-year-long lawsuit.
The bank disclosed a Sh7.2 billion cost of settling the pension claim in November 2025 and is not expected to make subsequent provisions relating to payments to the 629 ex-employees.
“Eighty-three percent of the 629 claimants have already been paid while for the remainder, we are waiting for them to give us the required documentation or are authenticating the documentation,” said Birju Sanghrajka, the chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Bank Kenya.
“Within three weeks of receiving the ruling, we were ready to pay, and we have been complying fully with that. We do not expect any further provisions with respect to the 629 claimants.”
The 629 staff successfully petitioned the court that their pension savings were undervalued when the bank’s scheme was converted from a defined contribution to a defined benefit scheme in 1999.
StanChart and its pension fund moved to the Supreme Court after the Court of Appeal, in March last year, dismissed a challenge that had upheld a 2023 High Court ruling supporting the payouts to the pensioners.
The bank had sought a stay of execution of the ruling, but the Supreme Court argued that the matter did not concern its interpretation.
StanChart now confronts similar complaints from ex-workers outside the former 629 staff attached to the Supreme Court ruling.
The new claimants cover more than 600 former employees clustered under a group dubbed “Non-629 Former Employees”.
The group petitioned the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA) in October 2025, presenting a list of 21 claims against the lender in support of its request to be included in the compensation.
The group had earlier written to the bank seeking inclusion in the payout to the 629 group.
In June, the RBA directed the trustees of StanChart’s pension scheme to review the claims submitted by the new group and assess their validity in line with its tribunal’s ruling.
The trustees, however, appealed the decision earlier this month, arguing that conducting the review would expose the scheme to substantial costs while it pursued its appeal against RBA’s decision.
The trustees of the Standard Chartered Kenya Pension Fund subsequently obtained orders freezing the directive by the RBA.
“We continue to work with our legal counsel and the RBA. We’ve seen submissions and claims filed with the RBA and are going through the process as guided, and we will see how that pans out,” added Mr Sanghrajka.
Before petitioning the RBA in October 2025, the former employees had written to the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in September 2025, asking it to compel the lender’s parent company—Standard Chartered Plc—to address their claims.
