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Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Uganda Microfinance Regulatory Authority-UMRA has rallied money lenders in the country to secure the requisite licenses to safeguard them against loan delinquents.
Delinquency can negatively impact a borrower’s credit, and this gets worse the longer the balance remains unpaid.
Several Ugandans have ended up victims and ended up losing collaterals like land, houses, automobiles, land tittles to loan sharks who employ all possible approaches to recover their money.
Racheal Vanessa Muhwezi, the Manager in charge of Microfinance Institutions under UMRA pointed out that sector players can avoid this by securing licenses to enable them to recover their loans through the courts of law.
Muhwezi observed that under the Microfinance Institutions and Money Lenders Act 2016, licensees are obliged to develop proper credit lending procedure manuals and delinquency management processes to minimize such disputes.
The Authority has currently registered and renewed licenses for over 1,000 non-deposit microfinance institutions with a capital of not more than Shillings 500 million as of the calendar year 2022.
Speaking to URN in an exclusive interview Michael Boden, the Unifi Loans SMS Limited Country Manager in Uganda, said that the country is still vastly unexplored, a niche that they have tapped into to expand the affordable and quick access to unsecured loans.
According to Boden, Unifi, a South African owned company has introduced instant and online unsecured loans to Uganda to support individuals affected by the extended lockdown measures due to the global contagion.
Unifi is a new money lender that has been giving out unsecured loans in Uganda since May 2021. It started in 2006 from Zambia and is currently operating different unsecured loan services in South Africa, Tanzania and now Uganda.
The company is growing network and has this week opened a new branh in Kabalagala, a city suburb of Kampala to cater for the interest of salary earners in the country. Other branches are in Wandegeya, Parliamentary Avenue and a flagship branch at Clement Hill, Nakasero.
Established in 2017, UMRA is a government agency responsible for the licensing, supervision and regulation of Tier-4 microfinance institutions, money lenders, savings cooperatives and any money-lending institution.
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