Rwandans will now be able to access up to Rwf30 million unsecured personal loans from Banque Populaire du Rwanda Plc (BPR). The unsecured personal loan has doubled from Rwf15 million as the bank aims to ease credit accessibility for its customers. This means that both existing and new BPR customers with a stable monthly income can access the loan without any collateral after fulfilling the terms and conditions. Maurice Toroitich, the Bank’s Managing Director, said the move is part of the bank’s strategy to make it easy for customers to do business with the bank through continuous policies adjustment. “We exist as a bank to make it possible for all our stakeholders to achieve their goals, and we are always looking for those barriers in policies, processes and systems that make it difficult especially for our customers to do business with us, so that we redefine them to become simpler and easier to serve our customers. That’s why we have reviewed our existing credit access conditions to be able to offer a compelling value proposition to our customers to enable them to make progress,” he said. The amended credit access conditions for personal banking loans include home loans, personal loans, and home equity and vehicle loans. The lender announced that monthly instalments on home, personal and vehicle loans will be up to 50 per cent of the customer’s net monthly disposable income, an increase from the limit of 35 per cent. The amount the bank can lend in form of Home Equity will be up to 70 per cent of the assessed market value of the property. Xavier Shema Mugisha, the bank’s Chief Business Officer, said the development seeks to improve the livelihoods of its clients after identifying that the existing conditions were challenging to a big number of customers. “The previous amount limited options for customers who wanted loans to purchase assets such as land or a vehicle, but now with the new changes, they will have the opportunity to do more and improve their ways of living,” Mugisha said. The lender will also allow a customer with an existing loan who has repayment capacity to access top-ups on their current loan balance. The BPR journey started in 1975 as a community-based savings and credit scheme and subsequently transformed to a fully-fledged commercial bank in 2008 with a core focus in retail and SME banking. In January 2016, Atlas Mara acquired a stake in BPR, which was subsequently merged with Atlas Mara’s existing operation, BRD Commercial Bank that resulted in the merged entity becoming the second largest bank with operations cross Retail, SME and Corporate Banking. In August 2021, KCB Group Plc acquired majority shareholding in BPR through the purchase of all the shares making the bank a subsidiary of KCB Group Plc. KCB Group initially set out to acquire a 62.06 per cent stake of BPR Plc owned by Atlas Mara Group and later in February acquired 14.61 per cent of the issued share capital of BPR held by Arise B.V. BPR currently operates through an extensive network of 137 branches, 51 ATMs and 350 bank agents across the country thus contributing to the social economic transformation of Rwanda.
