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Sidian seeking partners for its agency banking
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idian Bank has begun recruiting partners for its agency banking service to be launched in November, joining the long list of Kenyan lenders who have adopted the model. The tier-three lender, which is majorityowned by Centum Investments, has since April been piloting the service in towns like Nairobi and Kitale ahead of the national rollout. Titus Karanja, Sidian’s chief executive, said the bank’s target is to sign up approximately 3,000 agents by July next year as part of their efforts to take services closer to their customers. “We have fully tested the platform. We are in the process of aggressively recruiting agents in order to hit a critical number before launch,” Mr Karanja said “We did the piloting in a geographic test group so that even our employees across the country interact with the products. By November, we shall be ready to launch.” Under agency banking, financial institutions contract third parties to offer some of their services such as account opening, balance enquiries, cash deposits and withdrawals. Banks like KCB, Equity, and Co-
operative Bank among others, have taken up the model to boost efficiency resulting from savings associated with fixed costs of opening and maintaining a new branch. The lenders contract businesses such as supermarkets, pharmacies, couriers, hardware shops and post offices as third-party agents to banking services on their behalf. Mid-sized banks, which largely target corporate customers such as the Commercial Bank of Africa, NIC Bank and Chase Bank signed with Post Bank which has more than 100 branches across the country. “We want to give our customers as many touchpoints as possible,” said Mr Karanja. “Industry statistics have proved that agency banking is one of the best ways of mobilising deposits. It is also a low-cost channel to roll out and therefore it makes a lot of financial sense in terms of return on investment.” The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) said 17 commercial banks had contracted 40,224 agents as at end of March and they had transacted
Mr Karanja- CEO Sidian Bank
Sh176.7 billion through 55.8 million transactions during the period. Since the model’s launch in May 2010, 170.5 million cumulative transactions have facilitated transactions valued at Sh930.2 billion. “This was mainly due to increased confidence and acceptability of the agency banking model by banks and the public as an economical, convenient delivery channel,” the regulator said. Tier-one lender Equity Bank has said its agents are conducting more than half of its transactions, being more than the number being done by ATMs and branch tellers combined.
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Who owns Sportpesa? A club of local and international investors spanning three continents is behind the mobile phone-based sports betting platform SportPesa, whose fame touched a new peak with Monday’s signing of a £10 million (Sh1.321 billion) sponsorship deal with the English Premier League team Hull City. Customer complaints also factor into organizational change, especially with the employees. Bad reviews concerning services from the employees will force you to acknowledge the need to let the poorly reviewed employees go, or move them elsewhere. These negative complaints are your
Ex-kenya Airways Pilot, A Shrewd Nairobi Businessman, A Female Veteran Of The Gambling Industry, Three Bulgarians And An American Businessman
opportunity to exceed your customer's expectations. When fixing the complaint, offer a discount on their next purchase or a first look at new products. While an apology is enough, going above and beyond will impress your consumers even more.According to a study by the White House Office of Consumer Affair, happy customers who get their issue resolved to tell about 4-6 people about their experience. They will feel that you care about them and the next time they are talking about your business, they are conveying a positive message. A mistake is an opportunity to
learn and same goes for complaining customers.They give you a chance to evaluate your business and make changes that eventually turn into profit and success. In the club of deep-pocketed millionaires, whose ability to mint money has more than quadrupled with SportPesa’s runaway success, are an exKenya Airways pilot, a shrewd Nairobi businessman, a female veteran of the gambling industry, three Bulgarians and an American businessman. Former chairman of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association (KAPA) Ronald Karauri, businessman Paul Wanderi Ndung’u and Asenath Wachera Maina, the brains behind the controversial ‘Shinda Smart’ lottery, are the principal owners of SportPesa Three investors from Bulgaria — Guerassim Nikolov of the ill-fated Toto 6/49 lottery, Valentina Nikolaeva Mineva and Ivan Kalpakchiev — as well as American businessman Gene Grand are also in the list of top shareholders of Pevans East Africa, the entity behind SportPesa. Two other Kenyans, Francis Waweru Kiarie and Robert Kenneth Wanyoike Macharia, also have minority stakes in the betting firm, according to regulatory filings at the registrar of companies. Mr Karauri currently serves as the chief executive officer of SportPesa. Mr Nikolov’s Toto 6/49 lottery closed shop in 2011 under the weight of debts having operated in the market for about two years. SportPesa grabbed global attention this week when it became Kenya’s first company to sponsor a football team in the UK’s lucrative topflight premier league, and topped it up with a betting deal with Southampton FC — the club Harambee Stars captain Victor Wanyama played for until his transfer to Totenham Hotspurs last month. The three-year deal will see SportPesa’s name and logo on Hull City’s shirts when the next season begins in August. SportPesa’s sponsorship deal with Hull adds to a string of funding it has doled out to other sports entities at home including Kenya Rugby Union (Sh607 million), Kenyan Premier League (Sh450 million), Gor Mahia (Sh325 million) and AFC Leopards (Sh225 million). Arsenal Football Club in February signed a partnership deal with SportPesa seeking to grow its fan base in Kenya by offering locals exclusive bets and offerings such as merchandise and tickets.
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Changes to Kenya's banking law that will cap commercial lending rates risks driving borrowers to informal financial services, increasing credit inefficiency and undermining transmission of monetary policy, the central bank and an industry body said. Kenya's parliament passed the amendments to the banking law on Wednesday at a third and final reading. The changes setting maximum lending rates at 400 basis points above the central bank's benchmark rate, which now stands at 10.50 percent.
concern on the adverse consequences of capping interest rates. This would include, inefficiencies in the credit market, credit rationing, promotion of informal lending channels, and undermining the effectiveness of monetary policy transmission," the bank said. The bank has in the past urged commercial banks to lower rates, but does not set a cap and said it would continue to work with industry players, government and lawmakers to find a solution to lower rates. The changes are meant to address complaints that commercial banks often fail to lower their own lending rates even when the central bank cuts its benchmark rate.
It also sets a minimum rate for bank deposits of 70 percent of the central bank's benchmark rate.
Habil Olaka, chief executive officer of the Kenya Bankers Association, said the industry body opposed both amendments, as it would also damage small businesses.
Jude Njomo, the lawmaker who sponsored the amendments, told Reuters they would get a final nod from parliament on Thursday before being sent to President Uhuru Kenyatta to sign into law.
"The borrowers whose risk profile is ... higher than what is legislated will have to get credit elsewhere. These borrowers will have to access the informal lending sector the Shylocks and the other unregulated lenders," he told a news conference.
The central bank said in a statement that while it appreciated efforts aimed at lowering lending rates, it had reservations on putting caps on them. " W e con t i n u e t o e x p r e ss
Businesses often complain that high commercial lending rates, which can reach 18 percent or more, hobble corporate investment. Individuals say the high rates put borrowing for home loans, for example, out of reach of many.
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Change of Guard: Maasai women take livestock lead
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n a cold afternoon, three women are gathering dry grass and feeding it into a hand-operated baling machine. In no time, a bale of hay emerges and is hefted onto a waiting pile partially covered with plastic sheeting. The three Maasai women - Mary Nkaru, Susan Tonuo and Charity Kokwai - used to find enough grass for their cattle on their community's big communally owned ranches in southern Kenya. But communal grazing land in Kajiado County, where they live, is fast vanishing, as a result of sales, division of land and rapid urbanisation, with Kenya's capital, Nairobi, not far away. That, and worsening drought, has forced pastoralist families to turn to more sedentary lifestyles to survive - ones that have in many cases given women a bigger role in livestock raising, once the domain of men. "Decades ago, it was men's role to search for pasture for the livestock but of late women are looking after livestock," Kokwai said. The change has come as land has shifted from communal to individual ownership, Nkaru said. "People were told that to utilise the land better it must be subdivided into individual holdings," she remembers. "This brought the craze for title deeds and emergence of enclosures. "Suddenly we were being told that animals entering a neighbour's land could attract a trespass fine from their owner. It was crazy," she said. But dividing communal land has favoured the monied at the expense of ordinary pastoralists and led to growing inequality, Nkaru said. "Suddenly we had people with thousands of acres while others had to contend with a few hundred or less," she said. In male-dominated Maasai society, the divisions also meant that land was registered to men - who soon discovered it was a lucrative money-maker. According to Tonuo, many families suffered as men secretly sold some family land. With less land for livestock, destitution is now on the rise, she said. "This has created break up of families and the rise of
individualism, with children suffering malnutrition while others drop out of school," Tonuo said. LESS LAND, MORE FODDER To survive, the community's women have sought out alternative ways of earning money, some of which are challenging traditional gender roles. The three women baling hay are members of the Enkusero Pastoralists Group, whose membership is predominantly female. Based in Kajiado East, they are finding new ways to feed cattle that now lack sufficient land to graze as they once did. Members of the group, supported by the Neighbours Initiative Alliance (NIA), a non-governmental organisation that assists vulnerable members of the pastoralist community, have begun growing fastgrowing grass pasture to harvest for hay or silage, and planting caliandra trees with leaves useful as fodder. The new fodders are then used to feed animals in drought periods, when the pasture available is no longer sufficient and traditional migration is difficult, or sold to bring in cash. Members also buy livestock in drought periods, when many herders are selling, to fatten and sell to slaughterhouses. Tonuo said the alliance, in partnership with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, has also helped them build a silage storage facility. The group's more than 30 members also have bought dairy cows and are now producing milk that is sold to the Kenya Cooperative Creameries. "We run commercial ventures and the money we generate is able to meet our needs and buy supplementary feeds for our livestock," said Tonua, who heads the Enkusero Pastoralists Group. Besides working with livestock, including chickens, the
group has installed rooftop rainwater harvesting systems, and uses the water to produce vegetables with drip irrigation. "We feel empowered and we are also teaching our children self reliance," Tonua said. Joyce Saiko, an NIA programme officer, said the Maasai community has been reluctant to abandon pastoralism, despite the mounting challenges. The women's group changes, however, suggest that some aspects of the Maasai lifestyle can be maintained in smaller spaces by finding new opportunities to earn cash, she said. Those include things like bee keeping and cultivation of irrigated vegetables. A March study by Tegemeo Institute, a policy research institute of Kenya's Egerton University, said Kenyan pastoral communities which rely on collective tenure systems have a bleak future. It recommends inclusion of customary laws in the national legal framework to allow national courts to enforce customary rights used in the management of community land. It also calls for strengthening of community mechanisms to manage land. (Reporting by Justus Wanzala; editing by Laurie Goering :; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, climate c h a n g e , women's r i g h t s , trafficking and property rights
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Inflation Netted- CBK says
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nflation in Kenya is under control despite a food pricedriven rise in June and pressure from recent increases in the fuel tax, the governor of the central bank said on Tuesday, a day after the bank left interest rates unchanged. The year-on-year rate of inflation rose to 5.80 percent in June from 5 percent in May, as prices of food items went up. The retail prices of fuel went up on July 15, ushering in more pressure on the rate. "The MPC (Monetary Policy Committee)was quite comfortable with the dynamics," Governor Patrick Njoroge told a news conference. Policymakers left the benchmark lending rate unchanged at 10.50 percent on Monday saying the pressure on inflation was temporary. Njoroge said there was ample liquidity in the banking sector, adding that it was also starting to be distributed more evenly among the country's 42 lenders. The governor, who has in the past said liquidity in the sector was concentrated among a handful of large lenders, said on Tuesday
mid-sized banks were getting more liquidity as their larger counterparts saw a reduction in recent months. Two mid-sized banks and a smaller lender were shut down in the nine months to April this year, raising concerns about the health of the banking sector. He said Britain's vote to leave the EU last month could have implications for the Kenyan economy in the medium term as foreign investors take a wait-ands e e attitude. Britain is a n importan t source o f investme nts for the East African nation, whose exporter s are also fretting about the impact of Brexit on
Safaricom goodies a trade deal between the East African Community and the EU that is supposed to be signed by October. Tanzania has said it may not sign the deal, deepening the anxiety among Kenyan officials and exporters.
Kenyan telecom operator Safaricom will pay a special dividend of 0.68 shillings ($0.0067) per share, it said on Tuesday. The firm, which is 40 percent owned by Britain's Vodafone , has reported consistent profit growth in recent years, leading to a build-up of its cash reserves. "There is room for this one-off special dividend of 27.5 billion shillings due to the cash position of the company, and the significant retained earnings of 82 billion shillings," said Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore in a statement. Higher earnings at Safaricom have been driven by growth in Internet and its M-Pesa mobile phone-based payments business. Revenue from calls also grew in the year ending in March. Safaricom's shares rose more than 5 percent to 19.10 shillings after news of the special dividend. The firm said the dividend would be paid out on Dec. 1 to shareholders on the books at the close of trading on Sept. 2.
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Kenya Power grows connectivity
K
enya has connected 4.89 million households to the electricity grid, a 116 percent jump from 2.26 million in March 2013, the main power distributor said
Officials have been racing to increase access to power to support economic expansion, cutting connection charges for customers. Access to electricity jumped to 60 percent of the population from 27 percent in 2013, Kenya Power, the state-controlled electricity transmitter. The rate is based on multiplying the number of households connected to electricity by 5.5, the average number of people per household, Kenya Power said. It said electricity capacity rose by a third to 2,341 megawatts, mainly due to an extra 380.6 megawatts injected into the grid by generator KenGen since 2013. Kenya Power said the extra capacity had led it to cut tariffs
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CITY Classifieds Affordable, Effective Advertising
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Am No push-over, declares Obama’s brother as vote nears
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resident Barack Obama's half-brother, Malik 1985 where he worked with various firms Obama, says he will vote for Republican before becoming an independent financial consultant. Trump's stance against Muslims coming in to the United States was understandable even to Muslims like himself, Malik said.
African nation last July, and promised to visit more often when he leaves office. Malik defended his right to criticise his brother, citing freedom of expression. "To each his own. I speak my mind and I'm not going to be put in a box just because my brother is the President of the United States," Malik said.
"I'm a Muslim, of course, but you can't have people going around just shooting people and killing people just in the name of Islam," he said. He criticised President Obama's record in the White House saying he had not done much for the American people and his extended family despite the high expectations that accompanied his election in 2008, both in the United nominee Donald Trump in the U.S. election in States and Kenya. November because he likes the candidate and he is unhappy with his brother's leadership. The two men appear to have drifted apart but were previously close. Malik has visited Malik, who is in his 50s, told Reuters by phone from the president in the Oval office and was also Obama's ancestral home of Kogelo in western best man at Barack's wedding. Kenya that he supports Trump's policies, especially his focus on security. Obama's election created much excitement in Kenya especially in Kogelo village where "He appeals to me and also I think that he is down to their father was born before going to study earth and he speaks from the heart and he is not at the University of Hawaii. trying to be politically correct. He's just straightforward," he said. Obama visited Nairobi, in the first ever trip by a sitting U.S. president to the East Malik, a U.S. citizen, has lived in Washington since
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Uber goes for the kill with 35pc fare cut requests within their tenure. Uber Kenya says the peak hours are defined by demand across the seven days of the week. The firm says that there are 60 high potential hours in Nairobi when most client requests are recorded.
A
merican online taxi hailing firm Uber has guaranteed its drivers a minimum peak-time and off-peak pay to shield them from any loss of income arising from a passenger fare price cut that took effect in Nairobi on Thursday. Uber drivers will earn an indemnity of between Sh500 and Sh450 for every peak and off-peak hour respectively that they fail to get ride requests when their Uber gadgets are online. Uber will top up drivers’ earnings during the off-peak hours where rides requested are worth less than the set compensation minimum. To qualify for compensation, drivers must achieve a minimum requirement of being online (on duty) within the set hours, make one trip every two working hours and have taken 90 per cent of ride
“In order to boost the drivers, we have put a value to the hours by coming up with peak hours when there is high demand, we have put a guarantee that if a driver is working and they do not get a single ride request, Uber will give the driver Sh500 as compensation for that hour or, for instance, if it is the off-pick periods and a driver makes Sh200 we will top up with Sh250,” said Uber Kenya country manager Nate Anderson.
reduced its charges per minute by Sh1 to Sh3 and cut the pricing of short rides by Sh100 to Sh200. Base fare of Sh100 is unchanged.
drivers to ensure they don’t lose out. And if the amount they make on the road
“We believe these changes will help, but while the city adjusts to the new prices, we are putting in place minimum payment guarantees for
The tech firm says it has put systems in place to avoid cases of fraud and is capable of pulling data from gadgets and analysing it to authenticate drivers’ claims. “We have few requirements that we communicated to the drivers. We generally expect them to uphold integrity at all time,” he said. Uber slashed its charges in Nairobi by nearly half yesterday in response to mounting competition from local rivals. The new charges will see Uber charge its clients a rate of Sh35 per kilometre down from Sh60. The taxi-hailing firm also
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