An article by Dinfin Mulupi
The Kenya Women Finance Trust (KWFT) is Kenya’s largest microfinance institution serving women only.
The micro-finance institution was started in 1981 by a group of professional women with the aim of providing easy access to financial services for women.
In the past and still now, women in particular face many challenges when seeking financing. Just one of these include being asked by commercial banks to provide their husbands national identity card and collateral in order to be granted a loan.
Through the micro-finance institution women form small groups to guarantee each other’s loans ranging from Ksh. 10,000 (124 US Dollars) to 5 million Ksh (61,881. US Dollars).
In April this year, the Central Bank of Kenya issued a license to the microfinance institution to conduct nationwide deposit taking. With the license to become a deposit taking microfinance institution, KWFT-DTM now not only offers loans to its 45,000 clients, but also provides an avenue for savings by opening deposit taking (bank like) branches.
Since then the microfinance institution has opened five deposit taking branches have been setup in Eldoret, Mombasa, Kakamega, Nyeri and Nairobi towns.
The Managing Director of the KWFT-DTM Mwangi Githaiga, says it has embarked on an expansion drive with the aim of taking financial services closer to Kenya’s rural population who still do not have access to financial services.
The Microfinance plans to open 15 more deposit taking branches and 10 Automated Teller Machines (ATM) spread across the country before the close of the year.
In addition, the KWFT-DTM has signed a partnership with KENSWITCH, a Kenyan national payments switch provider, to allow its clients to access 800 ATMs enabled by KENSWITCH countrywide.
Nearly 80% of our clients are based in rural areas. We still have a long way to reach more women in the rural areas and provide them with loans and a platform to make savings. We want to make these easy, effective and convenient for them by opening more branches and setting up our own ATM machines,” says Githaiga.
Photo by Nikki McLeod
