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Tag: Dfcu

  • Banking at the Speed of U! dfcu Bank Introduces Cardless ATM Deposits

    Banking at the Speed of U! dfcu Bank Introduces Cardless ATM Deposits

    Under its umbrella campaign dubbed ‘Banking at the Speed of U!’, dfcu Bank has announced a new enhancement to its digital services, with the introduction of Cardless Deposit Functionalities across the country. With the new service, both dfcu and non-dfcu customers will be able to make free cash deposits into any dfcu Bank account using dfcu ATMs countrywide.

    The development follows the Bank’s recent replacement of its ATM fleet with new Smart ATM recyclers, which in addition to cash withdrawals and statement provisions, accepts card and cardless deposits from customers.

    Faridah Nalubega, Manager Cards and Money Transfers at dfcu Bank said the ATM deposit functionality is a welcome addition to the Bank’s portfolio of services and products whose value lies in making banking easy, fast, and safe for customers. “We believe that everyone who has already adapted the use of Mobile Wallets or Cashless transactions is going to embrace our new service. Whether you are the customer that must make an urgent deposit, or you are deliberately trying to minimize time spent in banking hall queues, the Cardless Functionality will serve you well,” she said.

    “24/7 Cardless Deposits will provide our customers with the option to bank their money in a way that is fast, simple and offers safety because of the security features available at our ATM points. Whether or not one banks with dfcu, they will be able to make deposits to any of our accounts at all hours, at over 60 ATMS.”

    Lloyd Jonathan Busuulwa, Head Alternative Channels at dfcu Bank noted that the enhancement reinforces the Bank’s commitment to offer banking solutions that fit into the lives of its customers. With our new campaign, ‘Banking at the Speed of U!’ we made a commitment to our clients; to be a bank that understands and meets their needs in a world that is transforming continuously. With the countywide introduction of Cardless ATM Deposits, we are keeping that promise by offering convenience that doesn’t have a timeout.”

    “It is our hope that customers will embrace this technological stride and be part of our exciting future which will have even more advancements,” Busuulwa concluded.

    The implementation of dfcu Bank’s Digital Strategy has been quickened by the outbreak and continued impact of the CORONAVIRUS, which has changed the way that communities, nations and companies operate. At the recently concluded dfcu Limited Annual General Meeting, dfcu’s CEO Mathias Katamba restated the institution’s commitment to the safety of its staff, customers, partners and communities through among other things, the digitization of its internal and customer-serving processes.

    Under ‘Banking at the speed of U!’, dfcu promises to deliver a range of products and services that will live up to that commitment and place it on the path to becoming a next-generation Bank.

  • Individuals and SME to access unsecured loans as dfcu Bank moves to support customers bounce back from the impact of COVID-19

    Individuals and SME to access unsecured loans as dfcu Bank moves to support customers bounce back from the impact of COVID-19

    Individuals and businesses can benefit from dfcu Bank’s affordable and unsecured loan products with the launch ofthe ‘Bounce Back campaign’ aimed at giving customers a boost at getting back on track following the upset of the COVID-19. The campaign complements the long standing dfcu promise of ‘Making more Possible’ for Ugandans.

    Customers will be able to access “Personal Unsecured Loans” of up to UGX 250,000,000 within 24 hours without having to put up the security normally expected of borrowers. Similalry small businesses can now apply for a ‘dfcu Baraka Business Loan’ of between UGX 2million and UGX 30 million with flexible security requirements and access funding within 48 hours.


    With     the ongoing challenges posed by the knock-on effects of the pandemic, dfcu recognises and celebrates the resilience of Ugandans and would like to do more in supporting the recovery process. The ‘Bounce Back’campaign is about focusing on supporting businesses and individuals to ‘restart and thrive’ despite the challenging times.

    “As part of the campaign we are offering our customers and Ugandans dedicated loans to help them financially get back on track this year. Individuals, will benefit from our  unsecured personal loans to not only take care of things that can’t wait for example school fees but also resuscitate personal long-term projects for example acquiring a new home, improving their home and so much more,” says Robert Wanok, Head Personal and Business Banking.


    “We also recognise that small businesses are a major source of employment and livelihood for many Ugandans    and require support in restocking their businesses and addressing other urgent working capital requirementsduring this period. To support them, we will offer the dfcu Baraka loan which is a short term business loan with very flexible security requirements,” Wanok added.

    According to Miranda Bageine Musoke, Head Personal Banking, “ Customers who apply for the personal  and business loans, will get funding within 24hrs and 48hrs respectively. Those who currently bank elsewhere and would like to move their loans to us, will get a 100% discount on arrangement fees effectively incurring no cost at all, while customers who apply for a a top up on an existing facility will get a 50% discount on the standard loan arrangement fees.

    Miranda adds, ” For the duration of the campaign that runs until May 2021, there will be monthly draws where any individual or small business that takes a dfcu loan will have a chance to win back their loan amount (up to a maximum of Ugx 20 million), for purposes of repaying the loan; in effect customers have a chance to win a loan that they don’t have to pay back. This is one of the ways dfcu is making it possible for our customer to Bounce Back!

    As part of the campaign dfcu has also rolled out a MediaBounce Back challenge that will have five (5) lucky journalists walk away with UGX 1 million each by simply submitting short stories on challenges faced in 2020 on account of the pandemic and how you propose to bounce back in 2021. This promotion is intended to encourage journalists to explore the possibilities of the new year inspite ot the challenges they may have faced in 2021. The media promotion is only open to journalists and will run until the 30th of March 2021.

  • Education in the wake of COVID-19 Pandemic

    Education in the wake of COVID-19 Pandemic

    In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, governments worldwide, Uganda included, declared extensive lockdowns in a bid to control the spread of the virus that saw many sectors of the economy including the education sector come to a standstill.

    Daniel Mukasa Ddamulira, founder and proprietor of St. Mark College Namagoma, in a webinar organized by dfcu Bank for the education sector revealed that Covid-19 took everyone by surprise, nobody was prepared, and so the schools were equally unprepared for this kind of experience.


    “    The pandemic broke out almost after we had just enrolled students for the new term especially senior ones and form five students. It was a shock for most of us as we had to break off. It’s like driving onto the highway andas you begin to accelerate with speed, you come to a halt. Initially, we had thought that it would be a short break. Many students left their belongings at schools,” Ddamulira remarked.

    The education sector is a very huge sector that employs more than 2m people both in private and public institutions and supporting more than 15m students. Given its priority, schools had to find a way to survive in this time as Ddamulira explains. “We had to reorganize quickly and so soon to make sure we remain relevant to our students. We also had the staff to think about. We had to find quick ways of engaging our students, and in this case, parents were our major link to reach the students.We looked around for an online application that we could use. The quickest that most of us had was WhatsApp. We formed WhatsApp groups because the phones were readily available and many people had them,” he explained.  

    “Having devised a way to reach the students, there was still another hurdle to overcome. The biggest challenge was figuring out what to teach at this level. Teachers had to be reorganized, align on what to teach and how to teach. The question was – is it revision, additional materials, or are you simply trying to make sure you have good relations with the parents?” Ddamulira recounts.

    Despite all these challenges, amid uncertainties, the engagements have gone on. Most of the candidate classes showed enthusiasm in the beginning but the flame was dying off. Now that the president announced the resumption of candidate classes, there is finally some hope. Some parents complained about data costs thus there wasn’t consistency.  To make it worse, a large proportion of the students could not access the internet.

    Another key challenge has been staff welfare – different schools have dealt with this issue differently depending on their ability. Some have terminated contracts, giving half salary and others have closed completely. Many schools have had a challenge of liquidity and banks have had challenges on how to deal with this.

    Ddamulira appealed to the banks to give schools liquidity so that they can open again. “We expect schools to open officially next year so banks should work with us. Assess clients based on past performances, Schools won’t be closed forever!” he appealed.  

    Jennifer N Ssewagudde, the Relationship Manager dfcu Bank, highlighted that dfcu Bank has over the last couple of months restructured over 90% of the credit facilities that these schools were servicing with the bank.

    “We saw that their cash flows were constrained knowing that the education sector was the first to be hit because the school business was closed first. Initially pushed it to four months with the hope that schools would be open in the third quarter of the year, but this didn’t happen so we have had to engage our clients and do a second restructure. We have pushed most of the payments to sometime next year – hopeful the first quarter next year,” Ssewagudde said.

  • The verdict is in; we’re bordering on too much of a good thing with COVID-19 communication

    The verdict is in; we’re bordering on too much of a good thing with COVID-19 communication

    The role of effective, consistent, localized and recurring communication in the fight against the coronavirus cannot be underestimated. Governments, health organizations, brands and even individuals have for the past 8 months used every avenue at their disposal to help communities prepare for and adjust to a world that no longer plays by our rules.
    It is worth noting that communication focused on behavioural change, socioeconomic changes and psychosocial adjustments is key to how humanity will recover from this crisis. But, like a famous adage goes, the science of doing “Everything in moderation” is as important to what lessons will stick with us and what will be washed away when the storm settles.

    In communicating with internal and external audiences, how do companies ensure that their messages are relevant, practical and have a shelf life that will go past the week’s hashtag?
    The diary of an over booked employee: For employees whose jobs involve team and project coordination, a calendar that’s fully booked for the next 2 months is expected. But for those who are tasked with the creation, development, testing and selling of products, spending 70% of work hours in meetings is detrimental and frustrating. Do online meetings offer flexibility? Yes. Do they take up less time or ensure more productivity? Not necessarily. Now may be a good time for companies to examine the ways in which we’ve turned internal communication into a never-ending and oftentimes, dragging activity and come up with systems that are sensitive to staff productivity and engagement.
    It’s time for links, codes and meeting IDs to take a bow: If we gave our customers a dollar for every online discussion that’s been marketed to them, they’d have a sizeable piggy bank. With each new engagement, audiences are subjected to eyestrain, data costs and information overload. “The new normal”, “Unprecedented times”, have become fodder for jokes from customers who have heard them one too many times.
    A critical part of a holistic communication journey is analysis – taking stock of efforts and making any adjustments if necessary; an action that doesn’t have to come at the end of this pandemic fight. Fewer but impactful activities will have deeper and lasting impact as opposed to frequent interactions which mix large panels with surface discussions.

    The burnt-out Communications Specialist: As management teams task their Brand and Communications teams to continuously churn out internal, stakeholder and customer communication, they should consider the limits of their team’s creativity and productivity. Whether it be a one liner piece of copy, a press release report or campaign communication, the routine birth of content is a heavy task. Having a clear, phased plan allows your company to focus on dissemination of critical and effectual dialogues and allows your team to create memorable campaigns and content.
    As each of us feels the effects of the pandemic, we can agree that the inevitable has already happened and life has indeed changed. But we cannot continue to act from an automated zone. On the one hand audiences are bombarded with online plus audio-visual content and limited time to process it or even apply it. On the other we have overstretched communications teams ticking boxes when what we really need to be doing is going back to the basics of effective communication which is about being deliberate, necessary and impactful.

    Rukh-Shana Namuyimba
    Manager, Communications and Events
    dfcu Bank

  • Hon. Elioda Tumwesigye praises SMEs as he lays out government plan for them

    Hon. Elioda Tumwesigye praises SMEs as he lays out government plan for them

    The Minister of Science and Technology Hon. Elioda Tumwesigye has praised Top 100 Mid-Sized Companies for the great work they are doing. Speaking at the companies Gala Dinner at Hotel Africana on Friday, Hon. Elioda assured companies of commitment to help them. Ms CityCide Investments took home this year’s Top 100 Awards Pinnacle Award.

    The Top 100 Mid-Sized companies is an initiative of Daily Monitor, dfcu Bank, KPMG and The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation was among the sponsors of this year’s gala.

    Below is the Minister’s full speech;

    It gives me great pressure to join the rest of you in celebrating hard work, persistence, creativity and transformation of ideas into reality. I am here to celebrate the achievements of the Top 100 Mid-Sized companies; congratulations to all of you the winners and those who didn’t win, there is always room for improvement.

    The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is mandated to provide overall policy guidance and coordination for scientific research, technology development and innovation in the entire national innovation eco-system.

    This is being done through creating an enabling environment that will increase businesses competitiveness to spur industrialization and generate the much-needed to radically scale up their efforts.

    The theme for this year’s Survey,” SMEs shaping the future business landscape,” is consistent with the Ministry’s efforts to strengthen technology research, development, uptake, transfer, adoption, collaboration and commercialization by both the private and public sector.

    The Ministry is interested in SMEs because they are the engine of national industrial transformation and therefore, for them to leapfrog their current growth bottlenecks, they must rapidly integrate new innovative approaches and bring forth technology intensive products and services. To this end, the Ministry is willing to pattern with you to work with innovators and researchers to create new innovative products and services which will increase your companies competitiveness.

    The Ministry and its core agencies are implementing several interventions to accelerate industrialization and growth of Mid-Sized companies, which include:

    *The Machining and Manufacturing Industrial Skills Training Centre* is under development in Namanve by the Ministry’s core agency, Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI). This will lead to advanced training in industrial automation and production of consumer and industrial machine parts. Therefore, the overhead costs on SMEs in retooling industrial workers will be reduced.

    * National Science, Technology and Engineering Skills Enhancement Centre (NSTESEC)- Sanga, and Technology Innovation and Business Incubation Centre (TIBIC)- Namanve*, spearheaded by core agency, Uganda National Council for Science and Technology to strengthen technical vocational skills, product development and incubation.

    *Science and Technology Park (STP)*
    The facility will contain business incubators, Technology transfer offices, Science promotion centres, research institutes. This facility will provide improved technologies, shared user support services, skills training, comprehensive support to product development and industrial product commercialization for innovators and SMEs.

    *National Innovation Fund*
    To bring new competitive industrial products onto the market, there is a need to increase investment in research and development by the private sector through symbiosis with public sector research institutes, innovators and universities. The Ministry has established an Innovation Fund to mobilize public financing to facilitate commercialization of innovative ideas and start-ups. But this can only be achieved through a symbiosis with private sector specifically the Mid-Sized companies which are in urgent need for new growth products and services. The private sector could bring onboard their facilities, complementary funding and their robust production and distribution systems.

    *National Space Programme*
    The Ministry through international and bilateral technical cooperation and programmes with Russia, Isreal, and Japan is developing the National space programme with the objective of launching a satellite by the end of 2022. The space programme will support the SMEs and other companies in data and information mining and storage which is crucial for business growth and expansion.

    *How The Top 100 Mid-Sized companies can address Uganda’s large import bill through innovation, technology development, transfer and collaboration*
    Here are some highlights of a few potential areas

    1. Industrial Investment in pharmaceuticals ( Annual average imports US$260m)

    Through a partnership with our Innovators based at NARO who have developed Pharmaceutical Grade starch from cassava and partnering with large pharmaceutical companies in Uganda, Mid-Sized companies could produce the non-active ingredients and binders for Medicaments and medical packages. This would increase the production of medicines locally reducing import volume and increasing regional export.

    2. Industrial investment in Veterinary drugs-Tick Vaccine

    Our innovators at NARO have made a breakthrough in Tick vaccine using advanced biotechnology and this product needs to be commercialized as industrial scale, another entry point point for Mid-Sized companies to build a partnership with researchers.

    3. Palm oil and its Derivatives (Average annual Import US$230m)
    The palm oil industry of Malaysia is valued at more than US$30billion with more than 30 industrial products.

    Bidco Uganda Ltd which operates the Kalangala Oil Palm project at projected 80,000 hectares including out-growers, is already transforming livelihood of out-growers, yet can not satisfy the market demand for palm oil fractions. Through a partnership between Mid-Sized companies, Bidco and our University researchers/innovators, new oil by-products could be brought into the market and rapidly expand Palm oil production to reduce the import volumes.

    4. Industrial Investment in Silk-Clothing line
    The Ministry is mobilizing large scale national production of silk under the Silkworm Project where families can easily grow Mulberry and start earning within 6 months. The will require industrial investments to produce silk garments, Cot-silk garments ( a combination of silk and cotton) which Mid-Sized companies can, to scale up production of blankets, clothing and household linen. This will reduce Uganda’s current annual clothing import bill of US$72m.

    In his conclusion, Hon. Elioda said the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and the entire government, in general, is willing and committed to providing you all the necessary support to see your businesses grow bigger and contribute to the national economic growth and development of our country. Congratulations to the winners once again.