NCBA Bank is facing renewed questions over the reliability of its digital banking services after celebrity chef Dennis Ombachi decided to close his account following frustrations with the lender’s mobile application and customer service.
Ombachi publicly criticised the bank, saying its application had repeatedly failed and that getting through to a customer service representative could take about an hour.
He described NCBA as having become “jokes sana,” pointing to what he viewed as a decline in the quality of service.
NCBA responded with an apology and asked Ombachi to share his account number through direct message so the matter could be addressed. But by then, the customer had already made his decision. Ombachi said he had visited the bank and closed his account.
The incident is significant because Ombachi has a large public following, meaning his experience quickly drew attention online. More importantly, his complaint did not appear in isolation. Other customers have previously raised concerns about problems affecting NCBA’s digital banking platforms.
LOOP users have reported issues ranging from repeated “Session Expired” messages to failed payments, application crashes and difficulties completing routine transactions. Some customers have said they tried logging out, reinstalling the application and clearing the cache, only to experience the same problems again.
There have also been complaints from customers who were left unable to complete till payments or other transactions after the application crashed or returned error messages. Others have criticised what they consider slow communication during service disruptions and generic responses from customer support.
NCBA NOW users have also previously reported problems involving bill payments, mobile transfers, login procedures and transaction authentication. Some customers have complained that the application unexpectedly closes while they are carrying out transactions, creating uncertainty over whether a payment has gone through.
These complaints raise a difficult question for NCBA: how many times can customers experience problems with basic banking services before confidence in the bank starts to suffer?
The controversy has also brought renewed attention to the bank’s customer experience leadership. Former NCBA Group Head of Customer Experience Elizabeth Okomba left the lender and later joined Equity Group, where she serves as Group Director of Customer Experience.
Former NCBA employee Dennis Otieno weighed into the debate, claiming that customer service at the bank had deteriorated after Okomba’s departure. He praised her as an exceptional customer experience executive and said he had worked under her.
Otieno’s comments are his personal assessment and do not by themselves establish the cause of NCBA’s current customer service challenges. However, they have added to the wider conversation about whether the bank has maintained the same focus on customer experience as its digital services have expanded.
For NCBA, Ombachi’s account closure is more than another social media complaint. It is a public reminder that banking customers expect mobile applications to work, payments to go through and customer support to respond when things go wrong.
When those basics repeatedly fail, customers can simply choose to take their business elsewhere.
