Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signs the bill to regulate digital lenders

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has approved a legislative reform that will allow the central bank to supervise digital lenders and rein in lenders who violate customer privacy.

In a statement, President Uhuru Kenyatta said he had signed the Central Bank of Kenya (Amendment) Bill into law.

“The amended Central Bank Act, 2021, empowers the Central Bank of Kenya to license digital lenders in the country while also ensuring the existence of fair and non-discriminatory credit sector practices,” it said.

The statute gives the central bank the authority to exert control over lenders in response to complaints from borrowers who can pay annualized interest rates of more than 100%.

“The central bank will now have the authority to supervise digital lenders.” “This is long overdue, and we look forward to it becoming law and to ourselves filling a void that has existed for quite some time,” said Patrick Njoroge, Governor of the Central Bank.

Njoroge dismissed the idea of using the law to limit the interest rates charged by lenders.

Consumers claim that, in addition to charging high interest rates, digital lenders violated their data privacy by bombarding the contacts they had saved on their mobile phones with calls and texts when they defaulted.

Until recently, there were no existing regulations to protect dozens of lenders.