Safaricom - 2021 Sustainable Business Report

86 SAFARICOM SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS REPORT 2021 / STANDING TOGETHER: GOING BEYOND / OUR MATERIAL TOPICS //// OUR STAKEHOLDERS / KPI SUMMARY AGENTS Our network of agents are primarily involved in M-PESA, facilitating deposits, withdrawals and registration. Our agents act as brand ambassadors, helping us to reach a wide range of customers. In FY21, we held six principal forums attended by over 1 872 agents. The number of agents has increased significant in FY21. This is largely due to the adjustment of the float ratio required to apply for additional tills to 30:70 (i.e. if 30% of the tills in a Head Office have met the required float level of KSh 20 000, the Head Office is able to apply for additional tills) and increasing the number of tills that an agent can apply for at a single point in time from 5 to 15. M-PESA AGENTS FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21 No. of M-PESA Agents 156 000 167 083 173 259 247 869 ENGAGEMENT WITH OUR AGENTS FY18 FY19 FY20 FY21 No. of bi-annual principal forums - 28 11 6 Agent attendance 1 980 2 200 1 872 Recognising agents’ concerns about arbitrage clawback commission, in FY21 we held virtual forums and conducted agent assistant training to educate agents on how it takes place, how to mitigate against it and the penalties and sanctions to be applied. We also sent out SMS broadcasts to all agent tills to alert them to the issue. BOOSTING SECURITY Our geo-locking agent tills ensures that the tills are geographically restricted to operate within the locality where the till is assigned, on the dealer portal. This new measure boosts the security and integrity of the agent till by making it difficult for unauthorised users to operate the till. To highlight awareness, we have educated agent assistants and agent head offices on the issue of escalating SIM swap fraud. This was augmented by our implementation of a dynamic SIM allocation system to mitigate the time taken from creation to the delivery of the tills to the agent stores, as well as the cost of the physical tills. REWARDING OUR AGENTS Our agent reward scheme, known as Stawisha Biashara – a Swahili term meaning “enhance/grow your business” in English, continues to grow. Under the programme, agents earn a point for every 1 000 transactions facilitated. At year end, a total of KSh 30.1 million had been redeemed since February 2019. FUTURE FOCUS • Motivate to create more business opportunities for women, youth and PWDs. Focus more intensely to ensure the sustainability of the whole supply chain ecosystem. • Extend checks on adherence to the supplier Code of Conduct to tier 2 subcontractors. • Extend supplier labour and human rights checks to tier 2 (subcontractors), as well as supplier risk assessment and self- assessment checks. • Track NPS for internal SCM (Supply Chain Management) customers. • Revamp the Supplier Recognition Framework. • Complete the process of building a platform that will provide agents with short-term loans that are Sharia compliant. STANDING TOGETHER, GOING BEYOND TO SUPPORT OUR DEALERS AND AGENTS The COVID-19 pandemic impacted our customers and hence our agents negatively. We stood together and supported them by providing the following loans: • We have partnered with a financial services provider to offer a credit facility known as Bloom Financing offering loans between KSh5 000 and 150 000 for Lipa Na M-PESA Buy Goods Partners. Under this scheme, 1 500 agents have been financed. • M-Jeki (“A little boost”) is an unsecured short-term loan for dealers and agents (head offices) to cover airtime, float and device purchases. It enables smaller and emerging operators to raise extra working capital against their trading history with Safaricom. In FY21, 400 agents made use of this financing. • Okoa Float is a new service we introduced in August 2020 to enable M-PESA agents to handle withdrawals even when they have no float money by simply taking a loan to enable deposits. The feature is a free-of-charge solution for short-term float need and has a limited repayment period of three days. To date, 450 agent head offices and 30 000 sub-agents have utilised this service. The current loan book value is KSh 400 million.