Founded in 2014, Fortune Credit (FC) embarked on a mission to expand financial inclusion for marginalized communities in rural Kenya. At the time, the financial sector primarily catered to urban populations, leaving rural and peri-urban communities without access to essential financial services due to the lack of innovative credit assessment methods.
In 2024, Fortune Credit secured its first investment from Triple Jump’s Oxfam Novib Fund, recognizing its credible impact model, strong track record, robust risk management framework, and clear commitment to women and green financing.
From the beginning, FC has been committed to financial inclusion, long-term sustainability, and digital transformation – prioritizing services for youth, women, and low-income or vulnerable populations.
Since its inception, the company has grown from a single office to eight regional branches across Kenya. Today, FC serves over 20,000 borrowers and has disbursed more than USD 5.7 million in loans.
Initially, the company provided finance to boda boda (motorcycle) operators to enable them to operate their transport and logistics business and consequently, improve their livelihoods. Fortune Credit later expanded its services to cover other unbanked and financially excluded groups, including small farmers, traders and gender-focused financing.
This expansion was driven by extensive customer feedback, strategic sector partnerships, and a deeper understanding of clients’ financial needs. As a result, FC has significantly broadened its service offerings and diversified its portfolio to better align with customers’ cash flow cycles and economic realities.
This includes:
- Product diversification from motorbike loans to clean energy loans, agricultural finance, education finance and small trader financing.
- Strategic partnerships with multiple value chain players such as suppliers and distributors to offer embedded loan products.
- Technology integration for seamless customer onboarding, loan management and stakeholder reporting.
Fortune Credit’s commitment to social impact is reflected in its lending model, which has always prioritized empowering underserved communities – especially women, who make up 60% of its active borrowers – as well as financing green products and measuring impact.
Gender inclusion and support for female entrepreneurs have always been central to FC’s mission. The company provides tailored financial products for women entrepreneurs, offers financial literacy programs for women-owned businesses, and collaborates with institutions that promote female economic empowerment.
FC’s social impact is further seen in the increased economic stability of their clients. For example, they see at least a 30% increase of monthly income for traders, small scale farmers and boda boda riders, less spending on fossil fuels, and a reduction in loan defaults by at least 69% due to improved financial literacy amongst clients.
In addition to their social impact, Fortune Credit is dedicated to environmental sustainability, as evidenced by its investments in climate financing, particularly through sustainable agriculture and clean energy loans.
Some of the key initiatives focused on environmental impact include:
- Financing electric motorcycles to reduce carbon emissions by 2.92 metric tons annually per asset funded.
- Encouraging clean cooking solutions for healthier homes saving up to 40% in health-related costs.
- Providing loans and insurance premium financing for climate-smart agriculture for better food security.
Furthermore, Fortune Credit harnesses technology – including mobile platforms, USSD, loan management systems, ERPs, and customer experience tools – to enhance loan processing and approval, improve accessibility for customers, streamline internal operations such as accounting, elevate customer support, and enable real-time stakeholder reporting.
To address risk management, Fortune Credit uses robust customer and partner credit scoring models to assess borrower risk and offers diversified loan products to mitigate sector-specific vulnerabilities. Additionally, the company engages in embedded partnerships to distribute financial risk among stakeholders and ensures business continuity through ongoing training and skill assessments.
With a decade of success and growing, Fortune Credit boasts a diversified product portfolio, strong risk management, and a proven track record of empowering vulnerable populations, particularly female entrepreneurs and those most vulnerable to climate change. Through its partnerships, FC continues to drive economic empowerment in rural Kenya, transforming the lives of low-income households by fostering sustainable business models.
Fortune Credit is supported by Triple Jump’s Oxfam Novib Fund. Valued at 44 million euros, the Oxfam Novib Fund (ONF) is dedicated to enhancing resilience in response to the escalating effects of climate change. ONF supports microfinance institutions (MFIs) that focus on underserved markets and target specific groups: rural communities, small-scale agricultural producers and women borrowers.
