The outgoing managing director also says customer confidence and digital services improved during her 45 months.
Patience Mutesi ended her 45 months as Managing Director of BPR Bank Rwanda on October 31.
In a farewell message, she said the bank came out of its merger with KCB Bank Rwanda stronger. Customers trust it more, its results are better and its digital services have improved.
The bank announced her departure on October 26 and said only that she was leaving to “pursue other interests”. Her farewell message gave no reason either.
Mutesi will be succeeded on an interim basis from November 1 by Xavier Mugisha Shema, the bank’s current Executive Director of Commercial Businesses. The appointment is subject to regulatory approval, and the board says it will begin recruiting a permanent managing director.
Mutesi took the job in February 2023. She says total assets have more than doubled since then, from Rwf747 billion at the end of 2022 to Rwf1.5 trillion by June 2026. Customer deposits climbed 136 per cent, from Rwf526 billion to over Rwf1 trillion. Loans grew 122 per cent, from Rwf457 billion to over Rwf1 trillion.
Revenue rose from Rwf72 billion in 2022 to more than Rwf115 billion in 2025, she said, while profit before tax went from Rwf32 billion to above Rwf58 billion. Both kept rising in 2026.
She also pointed to customer sentiment. The bank’s Net Promoter Score, which measures how likely customers are to recommend a business, jumped from 46 in 2023 to 88 by mid-2026. She credits the upgrade and integration of the core banking system. And BPR paid dividends in 2024 and 2025, which she says is a first since it became a commercial bank in 2007.
BPR Bank MD Patience Mutesi to leave as profit rises 35%
The bank’s own 2025 report points the same way. BPR, a KCB Group subsidiary, made a net profit of Rwf40.9 billion in 2025, up 35 per cent from Rwf29.7 billion the year before. Total assets rose from Rwf971.9 billion to Rwf1.4 trillion.
On the product side, Mutesi highlighted a new integrated digital banking platform and MoFaya, the bank’s digital lending platform. She said lending also expanded to women-owned businesses, farmers, and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. She credited partners including the International Finance Corporation, MTN MoMo Rwanda, the Development Bank of Rwanda and GIZ for helping drive trade, investment and cross-border business.
She thanked the board, KCB Group, staff, partners and customers, and said she would keep following the bank’s progress “with pride”, as a customer and an ambassador Mutesi came to BPR from TradeMark East Africa, where she was Country Director from 2016 to early 2023. Earlier, she headed corporate banking at Ecobank Rwanda. She took over from George Odhiambo and led the bank through its merger with KCB Bank Rwanda and Banque Populaire du Rwanda. She also sits on the board of MTN Rwandacell and on the advisory council of One Acre Fund in Rwanda. She holds a degree in quantitative economics from Makerere University and an MBA in finance from the Maastricht School of Management.
BPR began in 1975 as a network of cooperative banks, Banque Populaire du Rwanda, and later became a commercial bank. It has changed hands more than once since. Atlas Mara took a controlling stake in 2016 and merged BPR with the commercial arm of the Development Bank of Rwanda. KCB Group later bought the bank and, in April 2022, merged it with KCB Bank Rwanda to create BPR Bank Rwanda Plc.
Mutesi is the fourth leader to run the bank since the Atlas Mara takeover:
- Sanjeev Anand: CEO from January 2016 to February 2017, when he moved up to Atlas Mara’s group office.
- Maurice Toroitich: CEO from September 2017 until the 2022 merger. The post was empty for about seven months before he started.
- George Odhiambo: first managing director of the merged BPR Bank Rwanda Plc, from April 2022 to January 2023. He had run KCB Bank Rwanda since 2017 and then moved to the National Bank of Kenya.
- Patience Mutesi: February 2023 to October 2026.
Xavier Mugisha Shema takes over on an interim basis from November 1.
