Quick loans for youth

Youth Fund reduces loan application period to two weeks

The Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) has launched a Rapid Response Initiative (RRI) that will reduce the loan application processing period from three months to two weeks.

According the fund’s acting chief executive Emmanuel Odera, lengthy and rigorous loan application and process is one of the reasons why youth have been reluctant to take up the loans since the inception of the initiative a decade ago.

“The processing of the loans has always been a big issue. Initially, from the time we receive the application form to processing and finally issuing the money used to take even six months. Later the period was reduced to three months but still this was a long time because the applicants could sometimes get weary and even abandon their projects,” said Odera.

“But now we have launched a Rapid Response Initiative that will reduce the application period from three months to a record two weeks,” he added.

To actualise this ambitious plan, the fund which has so far disbursed Sh11.6 billion to more than 886,000 applicants from across the country, introduced new loan products and opened fully staffed operation offices at all the sub-counties in country.

Furthermore, while in the past, application processes that were completed at the field offices, were again repeated once the forms arrived at the headquarters in Nairobi, the staff at the sub-county offices have now been trained and empowered to finalise most of the application process, with the headquarters addressing only the finer details.

This re-engineering of the processes has seen the fund disperse more than Sh4.7 billion to more than 478,000 applicants in three years, which is more than a half the number of youth reached in the previous seven years.

Besides the improvement of the processes, the fund has also introduced new loan products to net more youth to benefit from the affirmative action funds. “Initially, we started with loan products for registered youth groups but realised that coming up with a group and having it registered would be a hindrance.

To address this we came up with individual business expansion loans (Vuka) for the youth who have existing businesses and are able to provide security. This increased the loan uptake,” said Odera.

[crp]