Old mutual loosens up: Old Mutual , the pioneer of unit trusts in Kenya has made some radical changes to it contractual savings plans to cope with a changing market place with many unit trust choices from a competitive fund and insurance industry. Changes include;
- Plans will no longer lapse if premium payments are stopped. E.g. when people get retrenched
- Savings (in a lapsed plan) will remain invested until maturity or can be paid out early
- If your saving plan was terminated without a payout, consider it reinstated!
Credit reference rules: Former finance minister Amos Kimunya was able to gazette the rules for operations of credit reference bureaus in Kenya before he left office. Provisions include;
- Bureaus will be licensed by the central bank
- Signup costs are 100,000 shillings ($1,500), a bank guarantee for 1 million and another fee of 100,000 per year
- Bureaus may share info only with a customers’ permission (which happens when you sign for a loan)
- They may only share information for business decision making (evaluate credit prospects)
- Bureaus must keep track of all information they share
- Customers are entitled to one free report a year, and within 30 days of a negative referral
- if a customer complains, and bureau not able to complete an investigation of disputed information within a month, information will be deleted as request by customer
Undugu at work: More Tanzanian IPO news with the upcoming sale of 21% of the Tanzanian Government shares of the National Microfinance Bank (NMB) to raise 63 billion shillings ($54 million) and later to be listed on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange. But the offer is open to to individual Tanzanians and companies that are whole owned by Tanzanians - unlike Stanbic (Ug) and Safaricom (Ke) (which Tanzanians were also barred from subscribing to)
