2022 Sustainable Business Report

96 | SAFARICOM SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS REPORT 2022 KPI SUMMARY OUR MATERIAL TOPICS OUR BUSINESS OUR STAKEHOLDERS AGENTS Our agents act as brand ambassadors, helping us to reach a wide range of customers. Our network of agents is primarily involved in M-PESA, facilitating deposits, withdrawals and registration. In FY22, we increased the number of agents active on the subscriber registration app to 33 000, empowering an additional 370 M-PESA head offices to sell devices. We also added 1 900 super agents to the network. In response to agents’ requests, we reviewed the Bloom financing matrix – which complements agents’ e-floats at an average of three months of their commission amounts – to allow more agents to access the revolving fund of KSh 1 billion. A further 136 agents made use of this option, bringing the total number of agents financed under this scheme to 1 236. Our incentive programme Stawisha Biashara (‘enhance/grow your business’), whereby agents receive a point for every 1 000 transactions conducted, continues to grow from strength to strength. In FY22, agents redeemed KSh 337 641 000 under the scheme. We strategically supported 319 agents by linking them with Stanbic Bank which provides unsecured short-term loans for dealers and agents (head offices) covering airtime, floats and device purchases. We also onboarded Equity Bank and Co- operative Bank as an M-PESA holding account. OUR M-PESA AGENTS FY19 FY20 FY21 FY22 No. of M-PESA agents 167 083 173 259 247 869 262 000 Reports of unauthorised users operating tills, sim swaps and identity theft are on the rise. Our geo-locking feature for agents restricts operations that are not within the agent’s assigned locality. In addition, we send weekly alerts to tills suspected to be committing arbitrage, advising them to desist. Safaricom’s compliance department also visits and refunds genuine agent tills confirmed not to have committed arbitrage. FUTURE FOCUS • Fortress our core business, with an intentional focus to drive 4G device attachment and enable data usage. • Accelerate new business growth areas in fixed fibre for home and business, WiFi, Pochi La Biashara and Lipa na M-PESA. • Step change our customer experience by enabling care desks across all partner channels. • Transform our Route to Customer (RTC) to deliver an unmatched omnichannel experience. • Embed digital at the core of all our customer engagements.