List of Digital Lenders Denied CRB Access by Central Bank of Kenya

Yesterday, the Central Bank of Kenya announced that they will bar unregulated mobile-based and credit only lenders from providing information to credit reference bureaus. This was due to numerous complaints the regulator received from the public from these unregulated lenders.

The question that people have right now is: Which lenders were denied access to the CRBs by the Central Bank?

We can tackle that by unofficially grouping these digital lenders into two broad groups: Regulated and unregulated.

Regulated digital lenders are the ones that are attached to regulated financial institutions like banks and microfinance institutions. These include Mshwari, Absa’s Timiza, KCB MPESA, Equity’s Eazzy Loan and the likes.

The unregulated digital lenders’ landscape is far much broader and they have been operating in a regulatory void. According to FSD Kenya, regulation of lending in Kenya is done by institutional form and not by activity. A majority of these digital credit providers do not take deposits, hence they are neither licensed or regulated.

According to FSD, there were approximately 110 mobile loan apps on the two main app stores from 74 unique developers as of September 2018. As of April 2019, 65 of these apps had been pulled down while 47 new ones developed by 43 unique developers. So we can safely say there are 92 digital loan apps as of April 2019 in the app stores and the number could be higher.

If we remove the list of bank and microfinance apps from this list (since they are regulated), you will remain with a list of unregulated digital loan apps that are available to consumers.

These are the top digital loan apps in Kenya and this list is not exhaustive. This list excludes apps from regulated institutions like banks and microfinance institutions. They are the apps that are most likely to be barred from sending your credit information to the CRBs.