Reprieve for depositors as insurer launches Sh140m plan to halt bank failures

 By Samwel Doe
@samweldoe
Kenya deposits Insurance Corporation (KDIC) unveiled ambitious plan of leveraging on ICT to help them in monitoring and tracking banking and deposit taking institutions crisis and help them come up with proper intervention mechanisms to help banks mitigate on likelihoods of depositors loss.

The Banking sector insurer will use the US$1.4 million state-of-the art ICT Centre to monitor and detect banks’activities and prompt corrective actions.

KDIC will ensure that depositors can access their money in case of bank closure and apply appropriate resolution tools to reopen the bank and help it remain open. It will also help banks to restore market confidence and preserve the asset institutions when banks are placed under receivership.

Speaking at a media event the Ag.CEO KDIC Mr.Mohamud A. Mohamud hinted that the use of ICT will go a long way in helping in effective monitoring of the banking and deposit taking institutions. He also assured depositors with Kshs 1,000,000 and below that KDIC is able to provide cover that will safeguards depositors against losses incurred when a bank or deposit taking institution closes its operations.

“We are working on modalities to ensure that Kenyans don’t suffer when bank closes by cautioning the financial risks and safeguarding small and sophisticated depositors because of their vital role they drive the business of banking and contributing to the larger economy of the country” said Mohamud.
KDIC assured banks and deposit-taking financial institutions that it will employ effective measures to help banks when in financial crisis, diagnose their financial problems in advance and avoid being placed into receivership. In addition, banks that are already affected will be helped come out of liquidation.

This comes amid a serious crisis in the banking sector in Kenya. Twenty four banks have been placed under liquidation between 1993 and 2005. KDIC is currently liquidating 16 institution after successfully winding up eight banking institution. The latest bank to be placed under receivership was Chase bank, on April 7^th 2016.

KDIC is an independent and semi autonomous statutory body created by an act of parliament enacted on May 2012 seek to provide deposit insurance to depositors of banks and financial institutions. It will take over the mandates of the now defunct Deposits Protection Fund Board (DPFB) which was a department of the Central bank of Kenya .DPFB was seen by many banking insiders as the liquidator of banks. In a change of mandate, KDIC has now transformed its role and is now focusing on coming up with effective measures to stem banking failures and intervene when banks are still working.

KDIC has powers, through an act of parliament, to collect 0.15 per cent of all deposits made in banking and deposit-taking institutions. With this plan 35.9 million deposit accounts are fully covered 96.5 per cent of total number of deposits accounts with total deposit of 37.2 million are now fully covered by KDIC.

Media Council to launch new media subjects

                                                    PHOTO:COURTESY
BY Samwel Doe
@samweldoe

Middle level colleges offering journalism courses are required to introduce a unit in Digital Media next month once a new curriculum for journalist training developed by the Media Council of Kenya (MCK) comes into force.


The inclusion of the course was informed by a rise in breach of ethical codes of the profession. MCK officials say the new curriculum, mooted five years ago, would be operational in a month’s time. “The key feature in that curriculum will be inculcation of the use of digital content in newsrooms for the middle level colleges offering Journalism and Media studies,” said MCK head of communication, James Ratemo.


Substantive work has been done, including validation of the curriculum by the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development (KICD) and the Ministry of Education, through Technical, Industrial, Vocational and Entrepreneurship Training (TIVET).


MCK officials and scholars say the meteoric rise of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter and micro-blogging sites were undermining journalistic principles of accuracy and credibility. University of Nairobi School of Journalism Director, Dr Ndeti Ndati, described the new trend as worrying for stakeholders in the media industry.



“Core journalistic principles of accuracy and credibility are being jeopardised with the utilisation of digital media, raising important new ethical and practical questions for journalists and policy makers,” said Ndati.

A number of leading universities in Kenya have begun reviewing their media and journalism curriculum in tandem with the emerging social media and ICT trends. The University of Nairobi is already working on a programme to address such emerging challenges.



Digital era


UoN will launch a Media and Communication centre in July that will focus on refresher courses on effective engagements with the new media technologies and tools. It will also retrain media practitioners on threats from massive adoption of digital media. “The programme is meant to fill in the gaps that are posed by the ever changing media landscapes in Kenya and to give hands on skills and knowledge of how to engage with professionalism when it comes to new media,” Dr Ndeti said.


While journalists have always wanted to be first with a scoop, the fast pace of news-breaking has increased to such a point in the digital age that accuracy is sometimes being sacrificed. During a recent anti-IEBC protest for instance, a video of a man being beaten violently by police went viral. The topic began trending in a few hours and a media house reported that the victim had died and even revealed his supposed identity.

It later emerged that the said man was alive and the media house had to apologise.


Experts from journalism academia and MCK have undertaken studies and come up with recommendations that will inform policies and regulations governing digital appropriation and effective utilisation.


More than 31 million Kenyans now have access to internet with at least seven in every 10 accessing the services countrywide, latest communication Authority of Kenya data shows.

First Published in the People Daily.