Kongola and Kasaka Loans and Savings Qorus Banking Innovation Awards 2019

The African unbanked population has always been a major headache for African governments. According to the Global Findex Database, ‘1.7 billion adults remain unbanked globally, yet two-thirds of them own a mobile phone that could help them access financial services. Barclays Africa is major player in the provision of financial services across the African continent. Barclays has also committed to a vision of shared growth through connecting people to formal financial services, and providing solutions that will enable people to save for family needs and borrow to support a business. Barclays believes that by providing access to financial services is a critical step towards reducing both poverty and inequality. A large proportion of the population of unbanked individuals in Africa cannot be serviced economically using traditional brick and mortar banking channels mainly due to high cost to serve. To fulfill its vision and goal Barclays collaborated with a technology platform provider JUMO and an MNO MTN to provide mobile Loans (Kongola meaning Borrow in Zambian local language) and Savings (Kasaka meaning Money Sack in Zambian local language) in Zambia to the largely unserved and underserved customers. Through these products, many customers who would not have access to finance because of thin credit files and were unable to save due to onerous on-boarding requirements can now borrow to finance their businesses and save for the future. One key differentiator of this innovation is that the system does not use traditional bank credit scoring and assessment methods but uses a subscribers account activity on their wallet. This makes these customers who ordinarily have a thin credit file qualify for a loan where traditional bank credit assessment methods would have thrown them out. The partnership of Barclays, JUMO & MTN has transformed the lives of many formally unserved customers since launch in October 2018. To date, a total of 300,000+ customers have accessed finance through this partnership and $41 million has been disbursed in 9 months.