Mwananchi Credit Limited is set to add a series of trading related products to its portfolio.
Dubbed ‘Trade Finance’, the products shall include cashless bid bonds, performance bonds, advance payment guarantees and letters of credit.
Currently, the Micro-Finance company mainly deals in Logbook Loans and Car Financing and has grown its customer base to become one of the leading providers in the market under those categories.
Speaking during the product rollout meeting on Tuesday, the company’s CEO Dennis Mombo had this to said many Kenyans are excluded from lucrative government and parastatal tenders due to impossible conditions in qualifying for those tenders.
He said that some of the financial institutions for example insist on 100 per cent cash cover for them to guarantee Bid Bonds or Performance Guarantees.
Meanwhile, when traders are seeking to import high-value machinery and other stock, they are forced to pre-pay to the seller when a Letter of Credit would have given them more time to cushion their liquidity.
''Mwananchi Credit seeks to make these services available easily to the common Mwananchi as it seeks to live up to its billing as the true credit company,'' Mombo said.
Mwananchi is diversifying into these product categories even as the country is slowly recovering from the covid pandemic and still reeling from its after-effects.
The government, in its last year, keen on completing its agenda 4, this June launched an ambitious Sh3 trillion budget.
If fully executed, it will see massive infrastructure spending that will in turn require a lot of Trade Finance documentation from the players. Mwananchi Credit seeks to tap into the newly formed market.
Last month, the firm slashed higher risk category emergency logbook loan rates from six to 3.5 per cent in an effort to deepen credit inclusion at the time borrowers are struggling with the effects of Covid-19.
The microlender also instituted a special Covid-19 relief to all its clients, providing a 100 per cent waiver on all penalties and charges accrued during the pandemic period for all qualifying clients.
The firm currently operating in Nairobi, Thika, Mombasa, Eldoret and Kisumu has plans to spread across 47 counties by end of the year.
