Investment Club App Qorus Reinvention Awards - MEA 2024 - Winner

An Investment Club is a group of people with similar investment/financial aspirations who collectively pool their resources (financial, knowledge and experience) to attain set investment goals. Usually, they are organized as partnerships and, after the members study different investments, the group decides to buy or sell based on the majority vote of the members.

dfcu promotes financial inclusion through Investment Clubs’ discussions, thus enabling low-income customers to get access to credit and improve their conditions. dfcu has a history of promoting a savings and investment culture that dates as far back as 2007 with the introduction of the Savings and Investment Clubs proposition to foster group savings.

Uganda has approx. 135,000 Investment clubs & SACCO. dfcu has grown its market share to more than 25% in a market where there are about 135,000 Investment Clubs in Uganda with an average of 15 members, which makes it 2 million household members. Having an average household of 4,5. So the impact of investment clubs is about 9 million people.

The Investment Club App is central to dfcu's our ongoing financial inclusion drive by encouraging personal and group savings and investments in Uganda. The App simplifies the day-to-day management of group savings by providing a digital real time view of all financial activities. The App helps with tracking member contributions, managing group lending and collections, effective reporting, and general administration anytime, anywhere.

At the time we launched this App, there was no one else in the market doing it, it became a key business driver for the Bank and made it the market leader in this space. Over time, other competitors have come on board such as Fund Managers (Xeno), and other commercial Banks such as Equity Bank.

This was an ambitious project that had support from numerous departments within the Bank - Personal Banking, Branch Distribution, Alternative Channels, Product Development, Risk, Legal, Compliance, Procurement, Business Change and Project Management. We also received technical assistance from Rabobank to build the initial concepts around the value proposition.

There are more than 10,000 downloads, more than 34,000 clubs/SACCOs have been onboarded by the Bank, delivering about 11% of the total CASA (Current & Saving) deposits for Retail Banking Segment.