Kenya targets alternative financial data to build inclusive mortgage market

According to stakeholders, achieving this will require a fundamental rethink of how lenders determine mortgage eligibility, including the use of alternative data such as mobile-money transactions, SACCO savings, rental payment histories, utility payments, and business transactions to assess the creditworthiness of borrowers who lack conventional payslips or formal income records.

Principal Secretary for Housing and Urban Development Charles Hinga said on Thursday that Kenya currently has more than 280,000 housing units under construction, representing approximately KSh731.5 billion in contract value and supporting more than 640,000 direct and indirect jobs. More than 45,000 units are expected to be completed by December at an estimated cost of KSh52 billion.  

“Ownership is not a single door. It should be a corridor with several doors, each opening onto the same outcome,” Hinga said during the opening of the 5th Kenya Affordable Housing Conference (KAHC) in Naivasha.

While traditional mortgage lending has generally favoured borrowers with regular salaries, formal employment records and predictable monthly incomes.

Yet this leaves a large part of Kenya’s working population including traders, small-business owners, farmers, freelancers and other self-employed people facing greater difficulty demonstrating their ability to repay a long-term housing loan.

Hinga called for the development of a standardised affordable housing mortgage, with common requirements covering eligibility, underwriting, documentation, valuation and servicing.

Such standardisation, he said, could make it easier for mortgages to be pooled and refinanced and eventually attract more long-term domestic institutional capital into housing.

He also proposed a common affordability framework that recognises how non-salaried Kenyans actually earn and spend, including the use of mobile-money records, SACCO savings, rental histories, utility payments and business transactions in determining creditworthiness.

With more than 1.29 million Kenyans registered on Boma Yangu, Hinga said the platform could also be integrated with lenders so that prospective homeowners can move more seamlessly from registration and prequalification to allocation, financing and eventually acquisition of title.

“The goal is to move Kenya from approximately 30,000 mortgages towards one million by building not only houses, but the market that places Kenyans inside them,” he said.

Remarks by KCB Kenya Director of Mortgage Business Caroline Wanjeri, delivered on her behalf by George Laboso, Senior Manager, Affordable Housing at KCB Bank, pointed to constrained investment finance, rising construction costs and the limited supply of serviced land as pressures that ultimately affect what homebuyers pay.

KCB said the role of financial institutions is consequently evolving beyond simply financing a completed house.

“We are looking at the entire housing journey while seeking to make these solutions more accessible and responsive to evolving customer needs,” Wanjeri said in the remarks delivered by Laboso.

The bank also called for greater use of alternative building materials to lower construction costs, alongside housing developments that incorporate energy efficiency, sustainable materials and climate-resilient infrastructure.

According to KCB, affordability should also take into account whether developments are connected to transport, water, sanitation and other essential services; costs that have a direct bearing on what households ultimately spend to live in their homes.

KMRC Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Johnstone Oltetia said the industry must now confront the two sides of Kenya’s housing equation simultaneously: increasing the supply of affordable homes while widening access to finance.

“This year's theme speaks to both the scale of the challenge and the promise before us: to close the twin gaps that constrain access at scale,” Oltetia said.

He challenged lenders, policymakers, developers and other players to focus on practical solutions that translate housing commitments into actual ownership.

“Let this be the conference where we stop measuring housing by what we plan, and start measuring it by what we deliver,” Oltetia said.

On his part, Shelter Afrique Development Bank Managing Director and CEO Thierno-Habib Hann said conventional housing finance models often assume formal employment, reliable land records, long-term funding and mature financial markets; conditions that do not reflect the realities of many African economies.

With more than 80 per cent of Africa's workforce earning within the informal economy, Hann argued that housing finance needs to be designed around how people actually earn, save and live.

He called for a combination of blended finance, alternative underwriting, capital-market instruments, green housing finance and digital solutions to expand the pool of people who can access homes.