I&M Bank has officially unveiled its dynamic savings campaign, “Shinda Millioni”, offering up to KES 7.5 million in cash prizes over three months to reward good savings habits. Customers who maintain an average cleared balance of KES 2,000 earn entry points into weekly and monthly draws, 10 weekly winners of KES 50,000, and one KES 1,000,000 grand prize each month.
Mr. Gul Khan, Chief Executive Officer, I&M Bank Kenya, highlighted the institution’s commitment to customer empowerment. “The ‘Shinda Millioni’ campaign is more than just a promotion; it is a testament to our dedication to live our brand promise – On Your Side, as we promote our customers’ financial well being. We want to directly reward good savings culture while encouraging both our existing and new customers to grow their deposits. This initiative is a core part of our strategy to build and cement I&M brand as a trusted financial partner in the market, ensuring the process is transparent, fair and ultimately beneficial for our customers.”
The Shinda Millioni campaign provides tangible motivation for customers to save by directly linking their deposits to reward opportunities. Instead of viewing saving as a distant or abstract discipline, customers now experience it as an exciting, real-world opportunity with the possibility of winning cash prizes. This transforms saving into something both practical and rewarding.
Another important element of the initiative is its low entry threshold. With just a KES 2,000 average balance, the campaign opens its doors to everyday customers such as salary earners, informal traders, and gig workers. This inclusivity ensures that a broad segment of the population can take part, advancing financial inclusion and ensuring that saving is not a privilege reserved for high-income earners.
Equally significant is the campaign’s structure, which encourages habit formation. By designing the draws on both weekly and monthly cycles, Shinda Millioni nudges customers toward sustained saving behavior. This consistency helps enshrine positive financial habits, making saving a regular practice rather than a sporadic activity. Over time, such habits contribute to long-term financial resilience and stability.
The Importance of Building a Savings Culture
Saving isn’t simply about stashing cash away; it is a foundational financial behaviour that shapes both personal security and national stability. One of its most critical roles is in enhancing resilience. By setting aside funds, individuals create a buffer that can be relied on during emergencies such as sudden medical expenses, unexpected job loss, or economic shocks.
This financial cushion reduces vulnerability and allows people to navigate crises without resorting to costly debt or selling essential assets.
Saving also plays a vital role in enabling planning. Whether it is funding a child’s education, acquiring property, or growing a business, long-term goals require consistent financial preparation. Savings provide the capital base needed to turn aspirations into reality, ensuring that life’s ambitions are pursued from a position of readiness rather than desperation.
At a broader level, saving fuels economic stability. When domestic savings rates are higher, countries are less dependent on volatile external financing sources, such as foreign loans or aid. This strengthens local capital markets, empowers governments to fund development internally, and creates a stable environment for investment and growth.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic savings average remains significantly below global norms, standing at roughly 18 % of GDP compared to a global average of around 36 %. This gap highlights the continent’s untapped potential in mobilising local capital to drive development.
At the national level, savings rates vary considerably across African countries. Angola records one of the highest figures at approximately 38.5 %, reflecting the impact of its oil-driven economy and resource-based revenues.
Botswana follows with a rate of about 22.6 %, buoyed by its mineral wealth and prudent fiscal management. Burkina Faso, meanwhile, stands at around 20.6 %, showing moderate progress but still below the levels needed to significantly reduce reliance on external funding.
These figures collectively underscore the vast room for growth in savings across the region. By increasing domestic savings rates, African economies can strengthen financial independence, reduce exposure to external shocks, and channel more resources into long-term development projects.
Saving Patterns Across Selected African Countries
In Kenya, savings are driven by both informal and formal mechanisms, with chamas, community-based investment groups, playing a particularly influential role. There are an estimated 300,000 active chamas across the country, collectively holding assets worth around KES 300 billion, or approximately US$3.4 billion. Alongside these informal groups, formal bank products provide structured savings opportunities, allowing individuals to grow their deposits in regulated financial environments.
In South Africa, the savings culture is strongly represented by stokvels, which are rotating savings and investment groups rooted in community trust. The country boasts roughly 800,000 active stokvels, collectively investing around R50 billion annually. These groups not only foster disciplined savings habits but also create social cohesion and financial empowerment within communities.
Ghana presents a different picture, where formal savings rates have remained steady but modest, even in the face of rising per-capita income. This indicates that income growth alone does not necessarily translate into higher savings; cultural attitudes, access to financial products, and trust in institutions also play crucial roles.
Looking at Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, historical gross domestic savings have hovered around 8 %, far below global averages. This low rate highlights the structural and behavioural challenges that have limited savings growth across the continent, reinforcing the need for innovative campaigns like Shinda Millioni to encourage broader participation in savings.
Kenyan chamas demonstrate the strength of community-driven saving mechanisms, bringing people together to pool resources and invest collectively. While these groups are largely informal, they have proven remarkably effective at mobilising significant amounts of capital and fostering a culture of mutual accountability.
In South Africa, stokvels illustrate how peer-based systems can democratise saving while building deep trust within communities. By relying on group contributions and shared responsibility, stokvels make saving accessible to people from diverse economic backgrounds, reinforcing financial discipline through social bonds.
Ghana’s experience shows that income growth alone does not automatically lead to higher savings rates. Cultural attitudes toward money, levels of financial literacy, and the strength of institutional frameworks all play a decisive role in shaping how, and whether, people save.
The historical average of just 8 % in gross domestic savings across Sub-Saharan Africa underlines the urgency for targeted initiatives like Shinda Millioni. By incentivising consistent saving through tangible rewards, such programs have the potential to break long-standing barriers, encourage wider participation, and significantly improve the region’s overall savings performance.
Institutional Support for Savings
Informal community structures play a vital role in driving savings across Africa, often bridging the gap where formal financial systems fall short. In Kenya, chamas operate as informal cooperatives, sometimes with exclusive membership criteria, where members pool investments for mutual benefit.
Over time, some of these groups have grown into more formalized entities such as SACCOs or even full-fledged banks, demonstrating their capacity to evolve and scale. In South Africa, stokvels serve a similar function as rotating savings clubs, but with the added benefit of regulation under the National Stokvel Association of South Africa (NASASA).
These groups channel significant periodic contributions into shared funds, offering members both financial support and a strong sense of community. Such structures are deeply embedded in local cultures, build high levels of trust, and often outperform formal financial institutions in terms of accessibility and social integration.
Formal financial institutions also play a critical role in providing structured savings opportunities. In Kenya, banks and SACCOs offer a wide range of savings products, with flexible savings account interest rates ranging between 0.5 % and 4.25 %, depending on the balance maintained and withdrawal terms.
These institutions are supported by a robust regulatory framework, including the Microfinance Act and the Deposit-Taking MFI Regulations introduced between 2006 and 2008. Such regulations have significantly widened access to savings accounts, particularly for low-income clients, by ensuring greater security, transparency, and trust in the formal banking sector
What Are Tier 1 Banks Doing To Boost Savings Culture?
I&M Bank’s Shinda Millioni campaign has made a notable impact by directly rewarding customers for saving, appealing to both new and existing account holders. The initiative cleverly merges behavioural nudges, encouraging consistent deposits, with the bank’s well-established brand trust, underpinned by its “On Your Side” ethos. This alignment of incentives and brand values positions I&M as not just a custodian of funds, but an active partner in customers’ financial growth.
The bank’s strong reputation is further reinforced by its industry-leading sentiment scores. According to DataEQ, I&M outperforms competitors in net sentiment by over 45 percentage points, a gap largely driven by customer-friendly offerings such as zero-fee M-PESA transactions. This positive perception is matched by hard numbers in customer satisfaction: I&M ranks third among Kenyan banks overall, but boasts the lowest dissatisfaction rate at just 4 %, demonstrating high levels of customer trust and loyalty.
Among other Tier-1 players, Equity Group stands out with over KSh 1.4 trillion in deposits, equivalent to approximately US$10.8 billion, and an impressive digital footprint, with about 86 % of transactions conducted through digital channels. KCB Bank also maintains a dominant presence through its extensive physical branch network and strong digital infrastructure, supported by significant core capital of around KES 124.8 billion as of the first half of 2024. Institutions such as NCBA, DTB, Stanbic, ABSA, and Co-operative Bank remain prominent in the market, although customer satisfaction levels vary. Equity, for example, enjoys high brand awareness but also records a relatively high dissatisfaction rate of about 15 %.
When it comes to savings product offerings, most Tier-1 banks provide interest rates that typically range from 0.5 % to 4.25 %, with terms often influenced by minimum balance requirements and withdrawal limitations. Each institution differentiates itself through unique value propositions. I&M’s Shinda Millioni stands out by introducing a gamified, reward-based element to savings. Equity Bank leverages its vast digital reach and positions itself as a driver of social empowerment, while KCB and NCBA focus on broad market coverage, particularly within SME financing and transactional banking.
Why Shinda Millioni Stands Out
The Shinda Millioni campaign is built on strong behavioural incentives, combining the discipline of routine saving with the excitement of winning rewards for positive financial behaviour. This approach transforms saving from a passive habit into an engaging and motivating experience, making customers more likely to maintain consistent deposits over time.
Financial inclusion is another core strength of the initiative. With a minimum participation threshold of just KES 2,000, the campaign is accessible to a broad cross-section of the population, from salaried professionals to small business owners and informal sector workers. This low barrier ensures that saving is not limited to high-income earners, but can become a shared practice across diverse economic backgrounds.
The program also plays a significant role in brand building for I&M Bank. By offering an innovative, customer-focused promotion that aligns with its recent awards in retail banking and POS innovation, I&M reinforces its reputation as a trusted and forward-thinking financial partner. This not only strengthens customer loyalty but also enhances the bank’s competitive standing in the market.
Perhaps most importantly, Shinda Millioni supports culture-building by encouraging a shift from occasional, ad-hoc saving to disciplined, habitual saving. Through its ongoing rewards structure, the campaign helps embed positive financial habits that can benefit customers for years to come, fostering a more resilient and financially secure population.
Will Shinda Millioni Catalyse a Savings Culture?
In essence, Shinda Millioni seeks to meld behavioural economics, financial inclusion, and brand enhancement into one powerful savings initiative. Within Kenya’s broader savings context, marked by informal systems like chamas and stokvels and formal bank structures, this campaign seeks to elevate the savings conversation.
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