Monday, April 1, 2019

Mobile banking boosts mortgage lender’s numbers


Shelter Afrique managing director Andrew
Shelter Afrique managing director Andrew Chimpondah (left), chairman Daniel Nghidinua (right) and HF Group CEO Robert Kibaara during the groundbreaking ceremony for a construction project on Kamiti Road on March 21. FILE PHOTO | NMG 
By BRIAN NGUGI
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Kenya’s oldest stand-alone mortgage provider HF Group said Friday its digital banking platform dubbed HF Whizz added half a million new subscribers slightly over eight months after launch.
The Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm’s newly appointed chief executive, Mr Robert Kibaara, said this underlines the vast potential of mobile banking at a time banks are embracing technology to counter disruptions from financial innovations.
Mr Kibaara, who was poached from NIC Bank last December where he held the director of retail banking, is eyeing to turn around the fortunes of the lender by growing it into a fully-fledged bank, with the company de-emphasising its property investment business that has been hit by a slowdown in the real estate sector.
The strategy, Mr Kibaara said, is anchored on four pillars including “building a digital bank, expansion into new banking segments and maintaining dominance in mortgage finance.”
“Through HF Whizz, we have become accessible to new customer segments that would otherwise be difficult to reach with the brick and mortar model,” said Mr Kibaara.
“Our digital innovation is customer-led, with products and services geared towards providing an end-to-end digital experience that allows customers to self-serve from wherever they are on the globe.”
HF Whizz, launched in July last year, entered a growing market of commercial bank-backed lending apps such as Commercial Bank of Africa’s M-Shwari, KCB-M-Pesa, Equity’s Equitel, M-Coop Cash and Barclays Timiza.
There has been growing use of fintech in the Kenyan banking sector as technology leads to fundamental changes in how the banking sector operates and delivers value to customers.
“Through the app, the lender has acquired 550,000 new customers, reflecting a 600 per cent jump in customer numbers; disbursed over 1,000 loans per day with the number of disbursements growing daily and registered transactions exceeding Sh2.5 billion,” said the bank.
Digital banking
Other banks are increasingly adopting mobile banking apps, signalling an era of shifting towards digital banking as lenders transfer their services online amid falling customer traffic at branches.
The HF app — available on Google Play and App Store — is part of the predominantly mortgage lender’s diversification strategy.

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