NAIROBI, Kenya, March 15 – The National Treasury has officially launched the Kenya National Entrepreneurs Savings Trust (KNEST) Board of Trustees which is set to handle the Hustler Fund savings scheme as part of its agenda to drive financial inclusion in the informal sector.
The Board of Trustees has been tasked to extend pension coverage to workers in the informal sector who could not be served by existing institutions, bringing more Kenyans into the saving space.
The Trust will include long-term (retirement) and short-term savings aspects of the Financial Inclusion Fund (Hustler Fund).
Speaking during the launch of the Board, Co-operatives and Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises CS Simon Chelugui tasked the board to ensure that every citizen can retire comfortably even if they are in the informal sector.
“We also want hustlers to retire at 60 years like any other person working in the formal sector, and to be able to afford a house, medical services among other things even after retirement,” he said.
Chelugui gave the board a target of 10 million Kenyans saving Sh10,000 each to be onboarded on the scheme by the end of the year.
“We understand that there are hard economic times and not everyone can afford this, but this is our target and wish,” he said.
KNEST is an individual pension plan scheme licensed by the Retirement Benefits Authority (RBA).
The scheme was intentionally designed to manage meager and irregular micro contributions by leveraging technology to provide an affordable low-cost pension product at high efficiency.
This was after a scientific study by RBA revealed that 80 per cent of Kenyans in the informal sector are not on any savings platform.
The study noted that most workers in the informal sector found pension products unaffordable with strict regulatory frameworks that could not include them, and this led to the development and licensing of KNEST on February 4 2022.
RBA CEO Charles Machira noted that as a regulator, he is delighted with the launch of the KNEST board of trustees as they will support the government’s bottom-up economic agenda by driving financial inclusion.
The KNEST Board of Trustees is chaired by SBM Bank Kenya CEO Moezz Mir. Other trustees are Tom Okundi, Joseph Wanjohi, Martha Opisa, Louis Karisa, Rachel Leyian, and Ruth Bungei.
