Initially it received a cool reception among the Kenyan Muslims but that has since changed dramatically as conservative Muslims have begun to flock to it.
The architects of the interest free credit (bait-ul-maal) says its penetration in the Kenyan market is due to vigorous education to the Muslim community a factor which they say has contributed to its acceptance and spread across the country.
Hassan Mohammed notes that though the structure of the institution is based strictly on the Islamic rules of transactions (Fiqh-ul-Muamalat), many consumers require a quick education on those very rules when the bank commences engagement with them.
"Our engagement has been educational explaining how we work, how we are able to offer interest-free credit and why we are an authentic alternative for those Muslims who are genuine in their desire to obey Allah in respect of their financial affairs. Once that is clear, the client immediately becomes our customer," he says.
"Growth like we are experiencing is as a result of the fact that the consumer demographic can see that we are a real alternative to banking and that they are able to achieve their financial goals in an Islamically recorgnised way that does a lot more for them than just banking. They feel that we offer a comprehensive financial solution," he continues.
As conservative Muslims have turned away from banking over the last year in Kenya because of serious questions about whether it is permissible Islamically, the Bait-ul-Ma'al has moved in to capture that niche in a manner that could not have been imagined even six months ago.
"the first conversation is about fifteen minutes long and it is like you have opened the clients mind to a whole new world thereafter it is smooth sailing but you will still need to explain the product range and the options available in depth," he explains.
It is clear from observing the sales process that the greatest impediment to the growth of the Bait-ul-Ma'al is a human resources difficulty which he admits.
"If we had enough trained staff we would control the entire Muslim market in Kenyan and then beyond but our weakness is that this is an area generally reserved for scholars so there are few laymen out here who know this area or have training in it and even the scholars are unable to work in a corporate environment with targets and a sales cycle so what we have had to do is train graduates from scratch which has proved painstaking with 50 per cent of those who enter training not making the cut at the end of the process. This is a bottleneck because a sales representative can only see a maximum of sixteen customers a day and that is assuming that they don't go for lunch or the bathroom. We literally have a waiting list of customers that we haven't dealt with and at the end of the day the number grows by about 30 per cent per day never reducing" he explained.
I inquire how with this bottleneck the company has been able to open a new office in Garissa.
"Opening an office is easy, staffing it and serving the huge number of customers in our case is the problem. Our product range and what we do has reached all corners of Kenya, we just have to find a way to service that demand" he concludes.
