Mr. Maina holds a BA(Econ.) Hons. and MA (Econ.) degrees from the University of Nairobi. He began his career as an Economist at then, Ministry of Finance, currently National Treasury. Subsequently, he joined Central Bank of Kenya, where he worked in Research, Bank Supervision and External Payments and Reserves Management Departments.
Mr. Maina has extensive experience in central banking, particularly, in areas of regulation and restructuring of problem banks. He coordinated the financial sector study, which formed the basis for banking sector reform, including liquidation of insolvent banking institutions during the first major banking crisis in the country, and was involved in strengthening the onsite supervision system and offsite reporting system to improve surveillance over the banking sector. The execution of Central Bank of Kenya foreign exchange reserves, involving investment of surplus foreign exchange reserves off shore was also supervised by him.
The onset of the aforementioned banking crisis prompted the establishment of Deposit Protection Fund (DPF) to revive the waning public confidence in the banking sector. The DPF has since been transformed to Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation. Mr. Maina was one of the officers involved in setting up the DPF, after being attached to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in USA for training in bank resolution.
Mr. Maina has extensive international training in areas such as bank regulation and restructuring, financial analysis, corporate governance, foreign exchange reserves management and financial programming and policies by IMF Institute. He also benefited from attachment to various Central Banks abroad.