I think first trying to fill an existing gap - there is no gap for people looking for big loans - there is a gap for people at bottom of pyramid - which is now being filled by shylocks, credit from duka, relatives, microfinances and all sort of people. These shylocks like credit lending is making poor people situation even more critical...confing them deeper into poverty with huge interest compounding their loans...those in micro-finance are losing their cows..or land.
There is a reason why China and even Ethiopia refused for a long time to allow commercial banks to operate until they developed - that reason is private banks will simply lock out most people by outpricing them as they cannot take risk gov can take - they will consider credit unworthy. Our experience with SOE of course shows it also easy for them to become politicized...we saw with KFA, KCB and National Bank...big cats take billions of loans and sink state owned banks.
So I think Hustler Bank is an opportunity to run SOE development subsidized bank without emotion/politics - all this will be computer algorithms based on behaviorial data that lend tiny micro loans - hopefully their ability to identity the most undeserved will improve - and to reward those that are disciplined and repaying. Hopefully it will deliberately lock out middle class and others from it....so they continue going to the usual banks where they expect modern banking at 15 percent.
Hustler Fund should never be about big ticket loans. Equity Banks have said once you graduate from this Hustler Fund - and hopefully with your savings and pensions - you can walk to commercial bank - and take huge loan.
In terms of scale - as you said - only 10% of 30m kenya adults are formally employed - so this has potential to serve 27M people - if you give them 500shs daily - they hussle with it - and repay with little interest daily - that is a lot of money.
Fuliza is doing almost 2B daily based on computer algorithm with 7million customers.
Hustler fund at almost zero daily interest can do 10B daily with 30 million customers - and money get rolled over and over - and in a year - this will be serious money - maybe 3 trillion kshs - if 5% of it get saved - that is 150B kshs worth of savings and pensions....which gov can top up with 75B...making it 250B kshs savings per annum with average loan size of 500shs daily.
The hustlers would have already beaten the formal economy by their sheer volume. Mpesa itself is an hustler bottom of pyramid success story - people sending small money - but now it exceed GDP.
The only risk is people not repaying as they take it as gov handout - which is why it has to be coupled with m-pesa - deduction must happen automatically - otherwise it will FAIL.
The government is borrowing at 12% but lending at 8%, so taxpayers are subsidizing 4%. The biggest weakness apart from the subsidy is data, hustler fund doesn't have enough data on borrowers to determine how much to lend. Maybe they should have combed kra, licenses, ecitizen data use that info as bases for lending. There's no reason why the hustler fund interest rates would be lower than treasury bill rates. (my two cents).