The Senate Finance Committee seek to know from the Central Bank of Kenya whether it had instituted a lending detection system and whether as the regulator, they had taken action on the entities abusing the laws as concerns arise over digital lenders offering loans at high interest rates.
This comes after reports that most of the lenders are unregulated putting millions of unsuspecting members of the public at risk.
“We realise that the DCP were not really consumer friendly that is why we brought them under CBK, we have license 32 quite a number a remaining,” CBK Governor Dr Kamau Thungge stated.
The CBK told the committee that they will submit a report within fourteen days detailing an audit of the digital lenders and steps taken on the entities that are violating the law.
The CBK governor also tackled the issues of the Kenya Shilling against other currencies.
“In January we expect 682 million dollars to come from the IMF, we also have some funds from the trade debt bank in the next two weeks, and we also have funding from AfroExim and World Bank we expect to reduce domestic borrowing, this should lower interest rates, we will see stability in the exchange rate because of external financing,” stated the CBK governor.
The committee is also probing reported cases of collusion between fraudsters and banks resulting in the withdrawal of clients’ money, CBK saying they are reviewing the policy guideline to slap guilty parties with 20 million penalty up from one million shillings.
