Exactly one year after launch, Barclays Kenya yesterday reported that its Timiza platform has registered over three million new customers and lent out over KES10 billion.

Barclays Kenya Managing Director, Mr. Jeremy Awori said Timiza, a virtual banking platform that allows existing and new customers to access instant loans on the mobile phone had surpassed all launch targets and grown into a key driver on non-funded income.

“Timiza’s impressive growth is a demonstration of the big financing gap in the SME sector and how lenders can use technology and innovation to close this Gap”, he added.

In the past, SME’s in Kenya have faced a myriad of challenges and inadequacies including lack of access to finance and credit from institutions such as commercial banks mostly due to the lending conditions given to them.

For instance, many commercial banks will require collateral for a loan, which presents a challenge seeing that most of these small traders do not have immovable assets largely due to their small asset base in comparison to large enterprises.

Timiza has now come in to fill this gap seeing that unlike large enterprises which may require millions in financing schemes to prop up their businesses, a small trader may only require five or ten thousand to purchase the next stock.

“With three million new data points from Timiza, our investments in big data and analytics will go a long way in assisting us to provide great service to our new customers” said Moses Muthui, Barclays Kenya Strategy director, during release of the 2018 full year results where the bank announced a 7 percent increase in profit after tax to KES7.4 billion up from KES6.9 Billion in 2017.

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