Agency banking takes shape despite numerous hurdles

Despite facing challenges, especially within the rural areas, agency banking is slowly gaining acceptability, commercial banks have said. Maurice Toroitich, the managing director of KCB Bank Rwanda, one of the four banks using the model, told Business Times in an interview that the major hurdle the two-year old banking concept faces is creating trust between the agent and the client. Toroitich said many people do not use agency banking outlets because they don’t trust the agents. “People think that agents will monitor their account balances,” he said.