NCBA and HEVA open a KES 20 million unsecured loan pool for creatives at 9%

NCBA and HEVA Fund have opened a KES 20 million loan pool for Kenyan creative businesses that asks for no collateral, charges 9% interest and runs for up to six months. The two announced the product, called the Start-Up Incubator facility, on 25 August 2026. It is open to individuals and to registered small and medium enterprises working anywhere along the creative industry value chain.

At 9%, the facility prices well below ordinary bank lending in Kenya. The Central Bank of Kenya put the commercial banks’ weighted average lending rate at 14.39% in July 2026, the most recent month published. That is a gap of about 5.4 percentage points.

What “no security” means

Banks in Kenya normally want collateral they can seize and sell: land, a car logbook, a fixed deposit. Creative businesses tend to hold a different kind of asset, such as cameras and studio equipment, signed contracts, copyrights and royalty streams. HEVA has built its own lending around those. It offers milestone-based debt tied to a creator’s intellectual property, or to revenue from copyrights and royalties. The NCBA facility takes a simpler route and drops the security requirement altogether. It also comes with what the release calls “hassle-free insurance”.

The release does not say what that insurance covers or who pays the premium. It also does not give a maximum loan size per borrower, an application route, or any arrangement fee. HEVA points applicants to its own HEVA x NCBA page, which as of publication details the partnership announcement rather than product terms.

The partnership

NCBA and HEVA signed the memorandum of understanding on 6 December 2025 and named five products at the time: event financing, invoice discounting, LPO financing, working capital financing and the start-up incubator. The incubator facility is the first of the five to actually launch.

NCBA Group Managing Director John Gachora said the launch follows “months of collaboration with HEVA Fund”. Wakiuru Njuguna, Managing Partner at HEVA, framed the deal as a move into mainstream banking. “We have spent the last 12 years at HEVA proving that creative businesses are commercially viable and investable,” she said in the release.

HEVA is a Nairobi investments and advisory firm for African creative industries, started in 2013. It works across fashion, film, music, gaming, digital content, performing and visual arts and live events. The release says HEVA has mobilised over USD 45 million since 2013. We covered HEVA in 2021 when it ran Ignite Culture with the British Council, a EUR 4.5 million grant fund for creative businesses across Eastern Africa.

Where this sits for NCBA

The facility falls under NCBA’s Ubuntu strategy, the 2026 to 2030 plan the bank published alongside full-year results in April, when it reported KES 23.4 billion in net profit for 2025. NCBA followed that with KES 12.4 billion in profit after tax for the first half of 2026, up 12.2%.

The bank is also changing hands. Nedbank’s offer for NCBA closed on 21 July 2026 with valid acceptances for 79.9% of issued shares, enough to secure the roughly 66% stake the South African group wanted. Completion is expected by the end of the third quarter or early in the fourth. We wrote about what NCBA shareholders were deciding before that deadline.