This archive report was first published on 16 July 2019.
Jijenge Credit: Combining Traditional and Digital Banking for SMEs ¶
Published on July 16, 2019
Mr. Peter Macharia, the founder and CEO of Jijenge Credit Limited, believes that money is the solution to most problems that people face day in day out. With a strong customer base in Kenya, Sudan, and Tanzania, Macharia's company enables business people to grow from one level to another.
After 25 years of employment in the banking industry, Macharia decided to take a voluntary retirement package and start Jijenge Credit in 2014. He took pride in this decision as an entrepreneur.
“In the credit department, your work on targets that are very specific. They give you the profits, business volumes, deposits volumes the numbers are very clear and they include up to the expenses of the team, so I checked my performance in terms of targets it was very consistent and upward moving. But I looked at the profit that I’m generating and the salary I was getting I decided to leave and make such amount for myself and the family,” Macharia narrated to Business Today.
According to Macharia, he settled on the name 'Jijenge', a Swahili word that means to build up, which is what every business person wishes and wants for their enterprises.
At the start of his business in the credit industry, Macharia confessed to lending money to small enterprises and businesspeople such as mama mbogas for as little as Sh5,000 with the highest borrower getting Sh30,000 at that period. Currently, Jijenge Credit loans up to Sh500,000 across the East African Region.
With institutions adapting to new technology, Jijenge Credit has a mobile lending service for its customers. However, their business strategy makes them different from the traditional digital lenders.
“We use a different strategy from other mobile lenders as we combine the traditional banking and the digital. We ensure that we meet the set requirements and anti-money laundering rule and we must ensure that fraud is minimized to zero,” Macharia said.
“We lend huge amounts of up to half a million, so we must be able to positively identify the person. We have tracking technicians and valuers and they come assess your assets and do a report on the same and send it to us via email,” he added.
