A future that is dead
Have you ever asked yourself where does a broke young lad get his money?, well I guess you might know and say may be from friends or family, but alas!!! No, there is no way a friend will always be giving money to another broke friend who can't repay. There is this new pro apps in town, the money-lending apps. There are many of them in play store and guess what they are the 10 most downloaded android apps in Kenya!!!!!.
the top 10 most downloaded money-lending money-lending apps.
- Tala
- Branch
- Saida
- Easy Banking
- Mula
- Safaricom M-ledger
- KCB
- CBA Loop
- Kenya Quick Cash
- Haraka
without forgetting the one from the biggest mobile network operator in Kenya-Safaricom, M-shwari.
So you might be surprised if you see your broke young lad breaking and throwing his safaricom line or even shutting down his social media like facebook. I pity such young innocent kids. Where is their future heading to? what do you think are this owners of money lending apps doing to curb such things? are they really happy or sad? definitely they are happy because their future is guaranteed once they submit the list of those who didn't repay their loan to CRB. Remember this money lending apps don't even need much information like banks need ๐๐๐, some might only need your social media profile to give you loan based on what we call social media reputation. For instance Tala will deploy an algorithm that assigns someone a “social reputation score” based on his/her online presence. And because the person requesting loan probably might have 10K followers, he/she will get a 50K loan, just like that!๐๐.
A recent survey shows that over 7 millions kenyans are digital borrowers through this money-lending apps and over 5.5 million of this are young broke lads probably students and unemployed graduates.
Now lets talk about how this owners of money lending will benefit from giving loans to such broke lads using what is called the 10X rule in Venture Capital.
Let’s say I am a venture capitalist. You approach me with an idea, and I put money into it. It is important for you to understand that I am taking a huge risk. If you start-up fails, I lose my money. So to justify this risk, I’ll tell you that I’ll put my money in your start-up and get ten times what I invest in return. So if I put 1 million shillings into the start-up, I’ll get back 10 million shillings over a period.
Now we have Venture capitalists who
have put in 5 billion shillings into these money-lending apps. In the
next couple of years, they are hoping to be paid back 50 billion
shillings. How do these Apps make the 50 billion? Two things. First,
they grow their loan-books by giving loans to those who do not deserve
them. It is not right to give an 18 year-old with no job a loan of 2K
just because they own a smartphone. The chances are that they will be
unable to repay this loan is considerably high.
They’ll be blacklisted
by the Credit Referencing Bureau (CRB) which will affect their ability
to get loans in future. Let’s say Tala gives you a loan of 2K today
which you don’t pay and CRB blacklists you. In future, you start a
business which you need to expand by seeking a 50K loan. You will be
unable to get this loan. CRB will actually require you to pay 10 times
the 2K you borrowed to get their clearance certificate. Thereafter, you
will have to wait for a certain period for your credit worthiness to be
assessed before getting the loan you need.
The
second thing that these money-lending Apps do is to hike interest rates.
Branch charges interest rates of between 12-170%. Tala charges between
61-243%. KCB M-Pesa has an interest rate of 73%. Okoa Stima charges you
521%. Now look at this and tell me if these Apps are any different from
shylocks. These are shylocks in suits and posh offices with
institutional backing from CRB.
If Kenyans
–especially the youth- do not begin thinking seriously about the harm
that the explosion in digital lending is going to cause us, then we will
end up with a tragedy larger in scale than what the world witnessed in
Andhra Pradesh.
Let me break it down for you.For instance India
is the hub of micro-finance schemes. And the South Indian State of
Andhra Pradesh is the hot-bed of the country’s
microfinance sector. In Andhra Pradesh, almost everyone owes money. In
2010, the state witnessed a prolonged drought which resulted in poor
harvests. The loan-dependent farming population, unable to repay
credit-bureaus that were on their necks, resorted to suicides. Thousands
of people in Andhra Pradesh committed suicide because they were unable
to service their loans. In global economics circles, this phenomenon
would later be referred to as the Microfinance tragedy of Andhra
Pradesh.
Now, the world’s largest Microfinance
institution –SKS Microfinance- is based in Andhra Pradesh. When the
company went public on the London Stock Exchange in 2010, its stock was
13 times oversubscribed. It attracted a multi-million dollar IPO while
the population it serves is the poorest in India. This, in my opinion,
is making money off the poor. This is immoral and it should be stopped.
To
avoid the Andhra Pradesh tragedy from occurring in Kenya, we need to
regulate the digital-lending sector which is profiting off poor Kenyans.
Most importantly, we need to teach our people basic financial literacy
skills. Otherwise, the young jobless Kenyans will begin committing
suicide in droves.
So imagine a lad taking a loan to repay another loan and take another loan to repay another and the series continues. Thus the lad might end up becoming a prisoner of this money lending apps and to be a prisoner I actually mean you don't have a freedom and right to enjoy whatever you are given.
The Muslim community might be the best community that has set a good rules for loans, saying any loan taken is totally prohibited so long as it has interest and well this is good because if my dream is to help the poor then why would I charge an extra penny if he or she is repaying on time or even due to situation he/she might be unable to pay. So if I gave you $100, you ought to return the same $100 I gave you.
A blogger by the name JAMES KARIUKI wrote in Sunday nation about this apps. He says,
the proliferation of digital loan platforms has not improved lives, a new survey shows.
So imagine a lad taking a loan to repay another loan and take another loan to repay another and the series continues. Thus the lad might end up becoming a prisoner of this money lending apps and to be a prisoner I actually mean you don't have a freedom and right to enjoy whatever you are given.
The Muslim community might be the best community that has set a good rules for loans, saying any loan taken is totally prohibited so long as it has interest and well this is good because if my dream is to help the poor then why would I charge an extra penny if he or she is repaying on time or even due to situation he/she might be unable to pay. So if I gave you $100, you ought to return the same $100 I gave you.
A blogger by the name JAMES KARIUKI wrote in Sunday nation about this apps. He says,
the proliferation of digital loan platforms has not improved lives, a new survey shows.
Instead,
the survey shows, many Kenyans have become prisoners of these systems,
in some instances borrowing to gamble or settle previous debts.
The study says about 6.5 million Kenyans are digital borrowers with 31 per cent taking the cash to try their luck in betting.
Sixteen
per cent of Kenyans have never taken loans through mobile phones while
20,000 Kenyans (three per cent) reported borrowing to place bets, says
the report.
The joint survey conducted by the non-state
financial inclusion agency – FSD-Kenya, Central Bank of Kenya, Kenya
National Bureau of Statistics and Consultative Group to Assist the Poor
says that available digital loan products have not improved livelihoods.
“Digital
credit is not reaching everyone and remains ill-suited for most of the
population, such as farmers and casual workers, whose livelihoods are
characterised by irregular cash flows,” says the phone survey.
While
borrowing to meet basic needs as well as replenish stocks in small
businesses were the main reasons for digital borrowing, 800,000 Kenyans
reported taking several loans to repay others.
“The
rise of the digital credit market has raised concerns about the risk of
excessive borrowing and over-indebtedness among lower-income households.
Digital loans are easy to obtain, short-term, carry a
high interest rate and are available from numerous bank and non-banking
institutions,” states the report.
About three million
borrowers reported late loan repayments that attracted hefty penalties
with nine per cent of defaulters being reported to the credit reference
bureau as risk-averse loanees.
“Half of borrowers spent
their savings to repay loans, 20 per cent of loanees reported reducing
food purchases and 16 per cent reported borrowing (mostly through family
and friends). Poor business performance and loss of jobs in 2017 were
the main cause of default,” it says.
The study calls
for the establishment of an oversight authority to scrutinise the
lucrative interest rates and penalties used by the digital loan
providers some of which don’t fall under any regulatory regime.
You have probably heard the saying, when the deal is too good, think twice.
Kenyan gov't must come up with a good solution in order to save the current generation who are the future leaders and other future professionals of this country.
THANKS FOR READING AND DON'T FORGET TO SHARE, WE WILL APPRECIATE๐๐
You have probably heard the saying, when the deal is too good, think twice.
Kenyan gov't must come up with a good solution in order to save the current generation who are the future leaders and other future professionals of this country.
THANKS FOR READING AND DON'T FORGET TO SHARE, WE WILL APPRECIATE๐๐