Kenya Insights

Tag: Loans

  • Exposed: Is Mogo Microfinance Determined To Milk Customers Dry? Here’s How To Stop Them

    Exposed: Is Mogo Microfinance Determined To Milk Customers Dry? Here’s How To Stop Them

    In the past couple of days, several aggrieved consumers have reached out to this writer , most of them who had been eager to own a car or a motorbike for business purposes; and even some in need to access emergence funds to meet pressing needs like basic needs, medical bills or school fees amidst the tough economic times. Majority of them have ended up suffering hugely as they have ended up in jaws of a hungry crocodile.

    Mogo Microfinance is said to be among the many unscrupulous microfinances in Kenya who have gone out of their way to ensure that apart from giving loans, they also reap where they didn’t sow. I have spoken to a number of affected customers.

    Mogo, has appears to have resolved to deliberately mislead consumers by running its adverts with promises of extremely low interest rates as low as 1% per month which immediately jumps up to 8% monthly after application, a clear demonstration of being thrown under the bus. Just think about borrowing KES 100, 000 to meet an emergency only to end up repaying KES 500, 000 due to unilateral change of interest rates?

    Away form that, Mogo has decided to act “Very Dollar” such that Mogo runs all adverts in Kenya shillings, their customers have loans disbursed to them in Kenya Shillings after which they exert their high bargaining power against the now weak customer; obviously your log book or whatever security is being held by them; but require that you repay you loan in dollars!

    Now, a customer would have to meet the exchange rates shocks in the current ever volatile market and Mogo has always seen it fit to direct the customers on how to acquire the dollars! Double business or theft? Could this be another contributing reason to the ever weakening Kenya shilling due to this artificial unnecessary demands created by Mogo and likes?

    Additionally, the document and related investigations seen by Kenya Insights pertaining to consumer violations currently indicate that woe into you if you try to have another agency, especially banks buy off your loan from Mogo! Once you present such a request, Mogo will ensure to exaggerate your loan balances to discourage you from moving so that they can continue milking you! How justified? I know of customer who has been following up on such a buy off close to six months. Where is the fairness in this?

    I understand the Competition Authority of Kenya has been doing much to protect Consumers and is obviously looking into some of the issues, but what about the customers who do not know to whom to run to? And Why can’t Mogo Microfinance be stopped by the Competition Authority? The Act empowers the CAK to impose up to 10% of what Mogo made as income in the last FY, which in my view should immediately be imposed to stop the violations.

    I wish to discourage consumer from lying low while being milked. Know your rights and know that you are protected by the Constitution and the Competition Act against all issues on False or Misleading conduct as well as Unconscionable conducts and if you are affected in any way or have any issues against the above, feel free to reach out to the Competition Authority through the email [[email protected]] , get their App on Play store, go to Ecitizen and then this “milker” to be busted. The services of the agency are totally free!

  • Banks Dominate Mobile Lending With 93 Percent According To New CRB Report

    Banks Dominate Mobile Lending With 93 Percent According To New CRB Report

    A report by Credit Reference Bureau (CRB) for the seven year-long mobile lending in Kenya has revealed that Kenyan mobile loans market is dominated by borrowers aged between 31 and 50 years with the banking sector dominating the lenders list with 93 percent of the loans market.

    Image result for CRB"
    Photo courtesy

    The report shows most borrowers, at 66 per cent, are averse to borrowing from more than one lender while another 24 per cent had borrowed from two lenders, leaving about 10 per cent who took up loans from more than two lenders.

    Creditinfo chief executive Kamau Kunyiha said Kenyans appear to be risk-averse to borrowing from more than two lenders even though the market has more than 50 digital loan products available.

    “Our data also shows that the banking sector dominates the mobile lending space by a staggering 93 per cent while the other seven per cent is lent out by digital mobile apps. We based this report on the data supplied to us by lenders in order to eliminate those buts and ifs and begin a trend of information that is backed strictly by data,” said Kunyiha.

    Mobile lending has grown in Kenya which has seen the rise of close to 50 platforms in a largely unregulated sector which includes major financial players such as KCB, NCBA, Equity and Co-operative banks.

    The data was collected between November 2018 and April 2019 and constitutes information supplied by lending institutions to credit reference bureaus (CRBs) under Central Bank of Kenya rules.

     

  • How Mombasa Hospital And Bank Of India Stole Sh15 Million From A British Octogenerian In Coma

    How Mombasa Hospital And Bank Of India Stole Sh15 Million From A British Octogenerian In Coma

    Mombasa Hospital has been alleged of swindling Sh15M through Bank Of India from Jeremy Franklin a British octogenarian who’s admitted at the facility after suffering stroke.

    At the centre of this alleged medical fraud is BOI’s Mombasa branch manager Manoj Kumar. Kumar is alleged to be in charge of a thorny scheme that wants to sweep clean the old Britons account at the bank. BOI is, without Franklin’s or his partner in the joint account consent are settling Jeremy’s inflated and non-transparent medical bills from Mombasa hospital where he has been in a coma for the last two and a half years.

    On July 12, 2017, the now 80year-old British citizen Jeremy Franklin was hustled to Mombasa hospital after he suffered a stroke. Later, was admitted in the ICU for a week. Franklin’s goose started cooking when he was transferred to Mombasa Hospital’s private wing run by Dr Swaleh Bukhet.

    Jeremy, who has since remained in a coma and his situation worsening every day while at the facility, the hospital remains the beneficiaries of his 30+ months coma. According to medical invoices at the Mombasa hospital, Jerremy’s medical bill was flying at Sh21 million by the start of October.

    When Jeremy’s guardian Said Omar, who brought him at the Mombasa hospital and has been responsible for his care including payment of bills requested for a medical report, BOI’s and Mombasa Hospital’s management permanently blocked him and thwarted his plans to seek alternative treatment for the almost dying Brit elsewhere.

    Omar had to seek court order through Kithi and Company advocates after Mombasa Hospital’s head of security Mr Omani under instructions of the hospital’s administrator Abbas Nasser blocked him from accessing medical files and Jeremy’s patient room.
    In what clearly looks like a masterminded medical fraud, BOI has, after Omar being blocked by Mombasa hospital, also blocked Omar from accessing the joint bank account he operated together with the now unconscious Brit.
    Omar also states that he was only shown medical invoices from Mombasa Hospital which indicated that the account has already covered
    more than Sh15 million of the skyrocketing Jeremy’s hospital bills.

    Kadima and Company Advocates on behalf of Omar on July 22 2019, wrote to Bank of India alerting them their client’s intention to sue the bank for blocking him from accessing to the joint account without logical explanations.

    On the other side, Kithi and Company Advocates have also sent a demand letter to Mombasa Hospital on behalf of Omar warning that unless the hospital produces Jerremy’s medical report, he will seek for the court’s intervention.

    “Kindly note that our client has been the informal guardian of his patient in your facility since July 2017 to date… Until recently, our client (Omar) was not able to discharge his duties pertinent to the patient’s care at your hospital with ease. However, the bank has of late frustrated our client’s seamless discharge of duties and thus will refer his predicament to the courts of law,” the lawyer’s letter dated September 23, 2019, to Mombasa hospital read in part.

    Our sources also reveal that Manoj Kumar, BOI’s Mombasa branch manager upon realising that the patient’s joint account contained millions of shillings, he together with Dr Swaleh Buketi, Administrator Abbass Nasser and others are scheming to hold the Octogenarian at the facility in a coma until his Bank Of India accounts are drained.

    Jeremy Franklin, a historical researcher, born in 1939 at Belfast, England has been living in  Kenya for the past three decades. He’s registered under British passport number 517899566.

    Also implicated in the mess is Sharda Rai, Bank Of India’s CEO who has not only been racially abusing and underpaying Kenyan staff at the bank but also alleged to giving unsecured loans to Indian golden customers. Sharda has also been alleged to, through the bank, aiding Indians in Kenya engage in inside loans trading and money laundering to India.

    Kenyan investigative agencies should follow this lead and act as soon as now. Also, the British High Commissioner in Kenya Jane Marriot should come to Jeremy’s rescue before the old man dies a poor foreigner in Kenya.