Knowledge base
Lending in Kenya: guides, tips and numbers
Everything below is written for the person who actually does the work: the operations manager reconciling a paybill statement on a Monday morning, the accountant whose trial balance will not agree with the loan ledger, the compliance officer who has been asked whether the Data Protection Act applies to them. No gated PDFs and no email wall.
11 articles · free to read · no email required
Start here
Choosing loan management software in Kenya: a buyer's guide
What a Kenyan microfinance company, SACCO or digital lender should actually check before buying loan management software — M-PESA integration, double-entry accounting, branch scoping, data ownership and migration.
Read itHow M-PESA paybill reconciliation actually works
What Safaricom's Daraja C2B API sends you, why a payment fails to match a loan, and how to reconcile paybill collections to a loan book without a spreadsheet and two screens.
Read itSACCO, microfinance bank or digital lender: who regulates you
The Central Bank, SASRA, the Commissioner for Co-operatives and the Data Protection Commissioner all regulate somebody in Kenyan credit. Which one regulates you depends on what you take in, not what you lend out.
Read itGuides
The long ones. How a thing actually works, start to finish.
8 articles
Choosing loan management software in Kenya: a buyer's guide
What a Kenyan microfinance company, SACCO or digital lender should actually check before buying loan management software — M-PESA integration, double-entry accounting, branch scoping, data ownership and migration.
loan management software Kenya microfinance softwareHow M-PESA paybill reconciliation actually works
What Safaricom's Daraja C2B API sends you, why a payment fails to match a loan, and how to reconcile paybill collections to a loan book without a spreadsheet and two screens.
M-PESA reconciliation Daraja API C2BSACCO, microfinance bank or digital lender: who regulates you
The Central Bank, SASRA, the Commissioner for Co-operatives and the Data Protection Commissioner all regulate somebody in Kenyan credit. Which one regulates you depends on what you take in, not what you lend out.
SASRA licence SACCO CBK digital credit providerWhy your loan book and your ledger disagree
Six specific reasons a lender's loan system and its accounts end the month on different numbers — accrued interest, penalties, write-offs, suspense, reversals and timing — and what each one looks like in the trial balance.
double-entry accounting for lenders trial balance loan bookPAR, OLB and collection rate: the four numbers that describe a loan book
Portfolio at risk, outstanding loan balance, collection rate and write-off ratio — what each one measures, how to calculate it, and the ways each can be made to look better than the book really is.
portfolio at risk PAR 30 loan portfolio metricsStatutory payroll for a Kenyan lender: PAYE, SHIF, NSSF and the housing levy
The order the deductions are applied in, which ones come off taxable pay before PAYE, what personal relief does, and why the NSSF figure in last year's spreadsheet is already wrong.
PAYE calculation Kenya SHIF deductionGroup lending and chamas: how the mechanics actually work
Joint liability, meeting attendance, group guarantees, the guarantor chain and what happens when one member of five defaults — the operational detail behind chama and group lending in Kenya.
group lending Kenya chama loansThe Data Protection Act 2019, for people who hold ID numbers and payslips
Registration with the ODPC, lawful basis, what a KYC file may hold and for how long, what a breach obliges you to do, and the penalties — written for a lender rather than a lawyer.
Data Protection Act Kenya ODPC registrationTips and playbooks
Things to do this week, in rough order of how little they cost you.
2 articles
Twelve things that cut PAR 30, in order of how little they cost you
Practical collections and origination changes that move portfolio at risk, ordered from the ones you can do on Monday with no budget to the ones that need a system change.
reduce PAR 30 loan collections KenyaMoving a loan book off Excel without losing the history
The order to migrate in, what to reconcile before you cut over, which historical data is worth carrying and which is not, and the three checks that tell you the migration actually worked.
loan book migration excel to loan management systemFacts and figures
The numbers behind credit in Kenya, with where each one comes from.
1 article
Reading is cheaper than a migration.
Everything above is what we would tell you on a call anyway. If you want to see it working against your own paybill statement instead, that takes 30 minutes.